Nine Tales
by Bovineorbitor1
Summary: Had it been up to him it would have remained nameless, but she insisted on refering to it as a saga of life, love and leek pancakes. Grimmhime
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Me no own**

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_Leave me out with the waste_

_This is not what I do_

_It's the wrong kind of place to be thinking of you_

_It's the wrong time_

_For somebody new_

_It's a small crime, and I've got no excuse..._

_Damien Rice, "9 Crimes"_

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**Prologue**

The sky unscrewed itself behind him

The thunder coming next sounded like the rattle of a cookie jar as the lid fell off and lightning fingers stole away the sweetness inside, and he was reminded of something, something old and rotten. He looked up through sodden bangs to see the storm flow into place.

It was an ugly, cruel god that rode the raindrops in, greedy, and it brought his mission to mind. (Because she was humble, and soft, and weak and unselfish, but she was the one with the deity label on her can, not him. (She barely seemed human at all, except for being stupid))

He did not shuffle aimlessly, hesitant, from foot to foot – an animal had poise, if nothing else. (Unless you counted arachnids, because as far as he could see all they had going for them was girly haircuts. (And take that, Luppi))

Instead he strode (swaggered) purposefully (arrogantly) over grey pavement. (Every step taken is one closer to whatever the hell it is you're looking for, and you walk quickly, even with the thoughts sonidoing around inside your skull)

He had a girl to use. (He'd never mastered talking to ladies. (He knew she was a lady by the way she looked at Kurosaki, and the fact that she didn't have him yet.)) She'd be easy – probably. It depended, he supposed, on how he asked. (That couldn't be the only symptom, though, because he hadn't snatched what _he_ wanted yet either, and the word would vanish entirely before being applied to him.)

He could probably manage a little politeness for this, and she had a heart as soft as chocolate ice cream, half melted. (He remembered discovering ice cream. Some kid had dropped a cone of it on one of their later excursions of terror, near the end of the war. It was sweet.)

The pavement finished as he turned up the garden path, meeting the doorstep. For some reason he'd expected a yellow door, even an orange one, but all the doors in the apartment were a dark, faded blue. She wasn't inside. He could tell even before entering, although he had no idea which of the many doors was hers. He'd sense that aura (That sweetness) a mile away, it sent something bitter rising up his throat.

He wouldn't admit to being relieved. (Better by far to not admit to anything, ever. Probably that was why Ulquiorra barely spoke. (Coward))

To wait, or not to wait? (Wait, wait, he'd started thinking in paraphrase? It had to be her work. He knew a corrupting influence when he saw one.)

And it was worse that that. He was thinking in layers (in afterthoughts), because of the confusion. He'd barely attended to her, when she wasn't doing dramatic crap like healing his arm or being beaten to death while he still needed to use her, and now he needed her (again), because he needed an edge, because as soon as you took three steps out of Hueco Mundo everything got complicated. He'd turn and leave (But not turn and run) if he didn't need her.

He turned, anyway, and wasn't in the least surprised to see her standing there, all ablaze with the flushed face and the ruddy hair, perfectly matching that berry head boyfriend of hers.

He was just a little surprised that his fragmenting brain slammed back together at the sight of her and her infuriating eyes, filled with timidity and yet not nearly frightened enough.

"Grimmjow?"

He frowned and drew his brows together, trying to fit the words around the need. They wanted to be blurted right out, and he could see her waiting.

When in doubt, postulate.

"Hey, chick," he sneered. "Nice place."

She glanced around at chipped paint and the water stain on the ceiling.

"Thank you," she said doubtfully. "Um…would you like to come in?"

And in he swaggered. Her rooms were sparsely furnished but cheerful, all luxury after Las Notches. He would have expected more, vaguely associating girls her age with pink fluffy things and accessorising.

"So, um…would you like some tea?"

He was irritated by her inanity, even now, but not to the extent he might have been had he not known the reason for it. She was brave enough to conceal her fear, now. It wasn't really her fault she was bad at it.

Besides, it pleased him that that spark of shaking defiance, the raw grind of terror on a living soul could survive the sight of him broken, bested, half dead on the floor, to visit them here, in this place, so much later.

She read in his expression his utter distain for tea, and he enjoyed watching the contours of her throat shift delicately as she swallowed.

"Coffee?" she asked.

Grimmjow blinked.

Inoue Orihime bustled when she was nervous. She spoke too fast and she tried to do too much all at once, often causing a succession of calamities to collapse on her and any innocent bystanders standing too close. Grimmjow watched her with the horrified fascination one might give a natural disaster if one wasn't the Sexta Espada and used to _being_ one, and then he shook it off. He grabbed her arm.

"Hey," he started. "I have a proposition to make, if you'd shut up and listen. Okay, woman? Then here we go."

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AN: Ah, an honest to goodness romance story, how quaint...

Or perhaps not. Wait and see.


	2. Tale 1

Disclaimer: Still no own. Fiddlesticks.

Tale 1: How to catch a rising star

_Cause I've been housing all this doubt, and insecurity  
I've been locked inside that house,_

_All the while You hold the key  
And I've been dying to get out_

_And that might be the death of me  
And even though, there's no way in knowing where to go,_

_promise I'm going, because  
I gotta get outta here  
Cause I'm afraid that this complacency is something I can't shake  
I gotta get outta here  
And I'm begging You, I'm begging You, I'm begging You to be my escape._

_Relient K – 'Be my Escape'_

Miss Ochi liked her work.

There were many – oh, many reasons to do so, not least the standard twaddle about cultivating young minds, watching genius solidify and idiocy congeal. The coffee wasn't half bad, either. 

Recently, however, there had been certain…events, which recalled to her mind her brother's brief term as a conspiracy theorist. It had to be something in the water.

Everyone was going mad.

Being a free spirited, fair minded lady, she politely ignored the whisper in crescendo going around school that it was all the fault of _that Kurosaki boy._

Just this once, she was dead wrong. (1)

She was right, however, in assuming that the explanation was slightly more complicated than her gossiping co –workers claimed, as she watched star pupil Inoue Orihime nudge and mutter to the air beside her. 

"Inoue-san?" 

The girl gave the usual guilty jump.

"Yes?"

"Are you being haunted, Inoue–san?

"No?"

The note of doubt in Orihime's voice was a little startling, but Miss Ochi didn't let it bother her. It was Friday, yes?

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(1) No, really. Just ask Ishida. 

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"_Umm…"_

"_Spit it out, girl."_

_She chewed on her lip. It was one of her pet habits, leaving a permanent indent as a mark of repeated abuse. Pretty soon, he thought, she'd start to go grey._

"_Are you…are you sure this is a good idea? Grimmjow?" _

_And again, he was a little bit surprised. He shouldn't have been. This was the girl who'd hustled round healing up the women who'd just beat the crap out of her. This was the girl who'd stood right by Kurosaki, pleading the Arrancar's case to Soul Society, regardless of the fact – obvious as it had been - that none of the survivors wanted_ mercy_. As far as he could see, that huge chest was all heart. _

_He was also amused, unwillingly. She looked so anxious…_

"_Quit whining. If ya do happen to decapitate me, isn't that a good thing for you?" _

_She said nothing for a few seconds, and then she opened her mouth again. That too seemed to be a habit with her._

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Inoue grabbed the pen just as it started to move to independence in midair. Grimmjow smirked down at her and dropped it, and slipped through her fingers and clattered onto the floor. 

She wondered what exactly she'd done, either to him or to any god you'd care to mention. 

Miss Ochi blinked, and Inoue improvised.

"There was…um, there was a spider! Yeah, a big, hairy spider. That was what it was!" She gestured hugely. Her teacher shrugged – _remember that it's Friday_ – and the classroom turned back to spit balls. Orihime was like that sometimes. 

She tried to concentrate on the essay, but even more potent distractions than the Sexta Espada existed. Light breezes, sunshine and birdcalls outside the window all told her firmly that this was not a day for focus. 

"Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…"

Her nose scrunched in confusion.

"Twelve, eleven, ten…"

Grimmjow's eyes were fixed over her head, an oddly dreamy expression in them. 

"What are you doing?" she whispered. He smirked, not moving his gaze.

"Three, two, one…"

The bell shattered the lazy lull on the revision class. His smile turned natural for half an instant, and Inoue's fears drained another notch. It was hard cultivating terror for a fully grown man-ghost-thing who could amuse himself for an hour by prodding you in the ribs and reading over your shoulder. 

He'd had the cheek to correct her grammar twice, too.

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"_Why?"_

"_Why what?" This girl had no business being enigmatic. That was Ulquiorra's job, curse his soul. _

"_Why do you trust me with something like this?"_

_He closed his eyes and settled back on her couch, listening to the creak and crunch of springs drown out her rapid breathing. Sharp pointy things stuck out of the fabric in places, mostly awkward ones. No way was he sleeping here tonight._

_The question had obviously been preying on her mind. He could sense the fidgets she went through in the open seconds he left before answering. _

"_Don't be so stupid, woman." _

_Not much of an answer, deliberately; he opened an eye to watch the frustration crystallise on her face._

"_Who are ya? Aren't you the cheerleader for that brat with the inflated messiah complex? Aren't you the one with the bookcase full of fairy stories? Ya really think that _I'd_ think something like _you_ would screw this up deliberately?" _

"_I don't know what you think of me, Grimmjow." She sat fussing with her skirt, all downcast, uncertainty in every line. He snorted._

"_Obviously. Now get on with it." _

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He dragged her off down the street by shear weight of expectation, just like he'd dragged her off into his Plan. 

Orihime was confused. Say that like it was something new. This time, however, she was confused about the particularly mundane issue of Why the Hell Grimmjow Jaggerjack Just Accompanied Her to Language Remedial Class. 

Actually, this being Orihime, it was probably Why The Heck, or just plain Why, but he was hardly concerned with her language preferences. 

And the answer…well, the obvious, really. 

He was bored out of his skull.

Not that he gave a damn about Kurosaki's opinions, but he could think of better ways to have fun that to have Berry Head lay into him for stalking his girlfriend, so he preferred not to accompany her anywhere her friends could see him, but her internal décor had not stood up to the test of time and scrutiny. 

And her DVD collection was no fun to watch when she wasn't around to disparage for bad taste. 

He had to admit to feeling slightly petty for tormenting her with levitating school equipment, but hey, them's the breaks. Her own fault for not being able to fix him up promptly. All he was doing was giving her more motivation. 

"Why are you having extra classes anyway?" he asked cockily. "Thought you were pretty near top student."

"Ishida's top," she told him gravely. "My grades have fallen recently." 

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"_Explain again." She smiled slightly, even through her wince at the string of expletives that preceded his explanation. _

"_It depends," he said through gritted teeth, "on whether you can only get rid of physical realities, or whether your power extends to abstract concepts. Like an absence of memories. My memories. Which would be why I'm here. Explaining. Again." _

"_I'm sorry."_

"_Damn right, you are." _

"_Grimmjow?"_

"_What now?"_

"_I don't know whether I can do this."_

"_Just try, chick."_

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"Too busy being kidnapped to study, huh? Damn, you must feel guilty."

Her pace slowed distinctly but he continued for several meters without her, finally halting when she stopped moving entirely. 

"That was over a year ago, Grimmjow," Inoue said quietly. His back straightened slightly. 

She watched, puzzled, as he continued to stare ahead, the impatience draining from the picture he presented. He ground one foot absently against the stones at the side of the road, generating a grating sound that rolled between them with the bird calls, and she realised that she'd surprised him.

"'zat so?" he kicked a rock up and caught it on one foot. Had anyone been passing by it would have appeared to be floating; she wasn't confused enough to forget to be anxious.

"Please don't," she pleaded. He ignored her, without malice. It seemed like he genuinely hadn't heard her speak. 

"Huh." 

The stone rattled as it dropped.

He started up again, and after a few seconds she followed.

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"_Are you alright?_

_What was it? A sense of stirring?_

_He blinked awake, and waited while the golden haze fractured and folded into a pair of concerned brown eyes. _

"_Did it work?"_

_Her voice stirred up the clouds in his brain, misting the scents of cinnamon and salt into the air of her room, colouring her ceiling all the shades of black and blue._

"_Hellooo?" _

_She didn't actually dare to poke him, but she did lean directly into his personal space, and he couldn't move to push her away. _

"_Please say something." More concern. She managed to make him feel choked with it, but not in the same way that Aizen had. This, at least was real. It tasted clean. He didn't know how she did it, but she'd already managed to make him not mind. _

"Somethin's changed,"_ he murmured, and her face split into a smile._

"_Then it worked?"_

"_Maybe."_

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"Grimmjow?"

And, again. He stopped for her, and waited. 

"Could you tell me? Why do you want the memories of your life back?"

They'd just about reached the front door. She held it open for him.

"You know how close a watch Soul Society is keeping on us Arrancar?"

_I've exchanged one set of chains for another._

"I need…an object."

_I need to know something they don't. An edge. _

"A goal. Figured I might have something I'd forgotten about."

_I'll overturn every stone._

"Something I'll be _allowed_ to have." 

_Something they can't stop me from taking. _

"I'm not going to let the chance slip."

_And then I'll be free. _

They stepped through, one after the other. 

Inoue paused hesitantly by the couch; Grimmjow grinned, and headed for the comfortable bed in her _old_ room.

It was time for some changes around here. 

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AN: What a jerk, eh? 

Anyway, thank you all so much for the reviews. I hope this doesn't disappoint. The chapters should get longer as we go, by the way. 


	3. Tale 2

Tale 2: The Easy Recall

Disclaimer: You know it.

_Well, __hey, hey, baby  
it's never too late,  
When I'm gone you won't remember a thing,  
But I can't stand to know I won't wait,  
I was gone from the very first day.  
Oh  
You've never been so used_

_as I'm using you,  
abusing you, my little Decoy  
Don't look so blue,  
you should've seen right through,  
I'm using you, my little Decoy  
My little Decoy!_

"Decoy" – Paramore

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It was...disconcerting, to say the least.

Grimmjow lay amid the carefully cultivated femininity of Orihime's room; the occasional ruffle, the previously unregarded artistic lampshade, and the _yellow_, and he reversed a decision.

He'd take the couch. The couch was looking pretty damn good right now.

Behind his eyes, the new memories that he'd found and hastily stifled yesterday stirred hungrily, prickled, and got a well deserved boot in the metaphorical backside. He gritted his teeth and extracted himself from her sweet smelling, clingy blankets and the lurking not-thoughts that had entwined themselves around him more thoroughly in the night.

And the first thing that he encountered, stepping out of the room into the bright new day, was a blanket of smog which eddied and swirled in gelatinous spirals, and from the smell, carried with it the souls of many departed green things.

He tried to remember that it was beneath his dignity to double over and wheeze, and doubled back instead, pulling open her little window and squeezing through, landing lightly and without compunction on the flower beds of the house across the street.  
He looked back at the innocent apartment with mild wonder, waiting for something to happen, for it to split into flames. He'd expected to have to rescue her again, at least, so it was with considerable astonishment that he saw her approach the windows on her floor and throw each open, grinning cheerfully and waving at him as even the smoke made its escape.

She was some kind of fearless, maybe.

And as he prided himself on his own courage, he supposed he'd have to step up and go back in, braving whatever witchcraft she had going on inside.

He did so.

She had the effrontery to keep shooting him cheerfully puzzled looks, presumably because she couldn't imagine what he'd been doing stampeding sweet Mrs Whatever's rockery so early in the morning. Maybe he'd done something else inexplicable and just hadn't noticed.

He felt justified in the knowledge that he wasn't the one cooking leek pancakes.

She did it with a casual enthusiasm that both repulsed and fascinated him; even one as unaccustomed to human misadventure as he was, knew that Orihime's taste in taste was flawed somehow.

In a few weeks time, he'd look back on this and not know what he'd been fussing about. The pancakes were a pleasant change in favour of normalcy, it must have been her day off. She and her twisted genius could summon much more terrifying culinary horrors, and eating them was a hazard that literally came with the territory. But that was still to come, and for now, he watched her with a bemusement which would also become almost habitual.

She dumped them on a floral plate and shoved them under his up-turned nose enthusiastically.

Grimmjow hooked his fingers against the cool china rim, and said:

"I don't eat human food."

Five minutes later he'd finished his second, not quite sure how she'd managed it, or why she was staring at his hollow hole as if expecting munched batter to drop through occasionally.

They had an…interesting…flavour, but they weren't actually _bad_, as such.

Ah, who was he kidding. He'd tell her they were terrible, but she'd probably heard it all before. He didn't want to end up boring her, or anything.

He ate a third.

"You can have your room back," he told her, not expecting the bright spark of gratitude. She'd spent the night freezing, uncomfortable, and touched with fear. The occasional ruffle, the artistic lampshade, the yellow, they helped keep the nightmares away.

"Don't look at me like that," he said. "It's damn girly."

"My look?"

"Your _room. _Where'd you get off, painting it yellow?" Like he didn't know. Pretty, sweet, girlish, everything Hueco Mundo wasn't. Himself, he took leave to dislike both.

Inoue recognised the lack of rancour in his tone, and offered him another pancake; enough of a grievance to put it back.

She glanced at the door again. His hackles rose, the obsessive animal part of him had noted how often she did that, counted each time, counted each time as a personal affront.

"Am I keeping you, or something?"

She jumped like she had when her teacher had asked her that awkwardly accurate question. He rolled his eyes.

"I haven't freaking kidnapped you this time. You can go. I don't especially need your company. Or are you afraid I'll burn your house down and make off into the night with your teddy-bear?"

"No, that's not it!" she said. She sounded so surprised that he thought he believed her.

"I…I just thought someone could be at the door." She jumped up, erupting into motion as she always did when uncomfortable. "Do you wanna watch a movie, maybe?"

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Whatcha got this time?"

"Um…Tatsuki lent me the Matrix?"

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"What a load of crap."

"…I quite liked it..." She knew better than to admit she didn't favour movies with lots of violence and death.

He waved the case.

"So…there's another of these, right?"

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It was half past three in the morning, and she was asleep on _his_ couch while static rushed and struggled inside her TV screen.

Grimmjow was all amazement.

Orihime's house was really quite cold, he could see the goosebumps on her bare arms from his position on the very far opposite side of the sofa.

She did have courage, an oblivious kind, as well as the deliberate defiance she had occasionally magicked into being – that was the kind he called stupidity, but this, this was something he had no words for. He had very little experience of natural optimism. It was beyond him how this – _child,_ this little girl-woman, could sleep soundly in his pissed off presence. There was _drool _at the corner of her mouth.

It was revolting. And curious. He wasn't so familiar with curiosity, either.

The silence rose and fell expectantly, all curled into little waves of discomfort, and an acknowledgement of the cold. She shivered in her sleep.

He turned the television back on, with the sound all the way down, and promised in the deep dark corners of his mind where memories jumped hoops to get her back for making him feel considerate.

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It had to mean, had to mean that she'd screwed up. Perhaps the whole thing was impossible.

Grimmjow's basic theology that blaming fate for personal failure was the height of cowardice had taken a distinct hit, because this, damnit, was _not_ what he'd asked for.

The gathered memories crowded behind his eyes when he closed them, taunting him in tones that set new standards for gobbledygook, all his madness given voice. They burned, just as shifting and shapeless as flames.

When he openedhis eyes, there she lay, like one more question.

Slowly but surely, he was being driven round the bend.

Bare, his feet hit the floor, and he walked.

Although his pacing was aimless, he had anticipated the wander outside, bringing him away from the four creamy walls that turned stark white in the light from the street.

The moon was practically invisible. He smiled at that. For as long as he remembered, excursions had been marked by the dramatic, half shadowed orb, dim but watchful - and here was an interesting thing – it's absence made the stars stand out like they were more than basically insignificant balls of gas however many billion miles away.

He'd never looked at them before, not looked_. _They had been the backdrop to the night terror that was Aizen's army, and that had been all.

Grimmjow looked at stars, and was cosmically unimpressed.

For a collection of vaguely attractive glitter, they'd generated a great deal of hype. Some nonsense about being humbling, he thought disdainfully.

He scaled the apartment with a small hop, perching on the roof and lying back, to be unimpressed at a better angle.

The eddying thoughts slowed as he stared up into the endless blue, as though absorbing the existence of such vastness had expanded the room inside his head. He'd even believe it, too, if he thought things like that.

In the midst of a life of pure concentrated pride, Grimmjow allowed half an instant of whimsy to wonder if the universe, looking back at him, was nearly as uninterested in him as he was in it.

On the other hand, he had no ambitions of generating poetry.

This sure as hell wasn't the kind of thing he wanted to waste thinking space on. Probably the pancakes. Turning back to the matter that was frustrating him beyond belief, he tried, once again, to sort out his new recollections into some kind of order.

As futile as inhaling ground glass in the hopes of coughing up diamonds, it seemed. There were feelings – angry – happy – elated – disappointed – afraid- and there were sights – skygrasstreeflagstone, the occasional face, hell, _stars, _and there were smells, and sounds, too fragmented to amount to anything more than a headache. The whole thing was a mess.

"What good are you?" he asked loudly, and whether he was talking to the girl, or the memories, or the stars, he didn't know.

The fresh night air wasn't helping his mood any. He'd been more comfortable counting the swirls on her ceiling - .

It took him another ten minutes at least to realise that he was disconcerted by how unfamiliar the sky really was.

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Presently – hours later - a new thought struck him, drifting in on the revolving haze of insomnia, an awareness the roof tiles on which he sat were not designed for the purpose.

Ouch.

Damnit.

He jumped, wincing as he landed on deadened feet, and - stopped. He'd had had some trouble with human technology, but this was ridiculous. He wrenched hopelessly at the door handle. Automatic lock, huh?

Alright. Well, he had a few options.

He'd never got the concept of throwing stones at windows; if you were throwing stones, presumably you were trying to break something. Glass was expensive.

Therefore it was purely in a spirit of charity that he busted her lock off.

After all, if he waited outside all night, she might be the type to make a cat-flap joke, and then he'd have to kill her.

He still needed her, to fix her mess, to fix him.

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Inoue rolled off the couch in waking up, stubbing out whatever her dreams had been as she thumped against the carpet.

He was sitting cross legged, laughing just a little at the picture she presented – and then the laugh slipped off, leaving just his stare, too intent for either of their comforts. She struggled upright, embarrassment and apology embodied in the foolish little giggle and the rush upstairs to wash.

Inoue leaned her back against the bathroom wall as the real world knocked gently on her mental doors. Reality's adornments were not often on her coat rack, as any of her friends would testify, but this once she'd listen.

Reality told her to be afraid. He was dangerous, and cruel, and just not at all someone she wanted to be around for extended periods of time, particularly not in close proximity and especially particularly not in her room. Common sense told her to call someone and have him chased off, however that would work.

Reality also told her she couldn't have been having movie marathons with an Arrancar last night. She really couldn't have.

He got much more mellow when you fed him ice cream.

There was a rap on the door, followed shortly by his impassive voice.

"How long you gonna stay in there?"

She snapped to attention. She must have been truly ages if he'd come looking for her.

"Sorry." She unlocked the door and smiled up at him. "Did you need in?"

He rolled his eyes. "Nah. You've been like half an hour. Just checking you hadn't exploded from terminal indigestion, or something."

Inoue's nose wrinkled. _What a nasty way to die…_

He laughed at her expression. "Right. Wouldn't like to be the Shinigami assigned to _that_ ghost."

"You wouldn't like to be _any _kind of Shinigami." Inoue answered absently, distracted by the blossoming understanding that she'd started to notice growing inside her as she herself grew accustomed to her house-guest. It was full enough to cause her to glance up as the words left her lips, realising ahead of time that his face would be souring with irritation.

"Damn, woman, what's wrong with you? It's just an expression."

"I know." She smiled, indefatigably.

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"Hey, about that Matrix thing?"

"Yes?"

"Human's can't do all that dodging bullets crap. So, how?"

"They're called special effects. Um…I can tell you a little bit, but you'd probably be better off Googling it."

"Googling? What the hell - ?"

"Oh, wow." Orihime combined a giggle with a wince.

"This…this might take a while."

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AN: Again, thanks for the reviews. Next chapter may take longer because, for once thing, it contains the first turning point in their relationship, and for another, I'll be going on holiday soon. Yays.

Oh yeah, and next chapter should also be the first properly from 'Hime's POV.


	4. Tale 3

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

Tale 3: Feathers of the Albatross 

It's too late that now,  
I've changed my mind.  
Too late somehow,  
to recognize.  
When all else fails,  
and all I find.  
Are all my words.  
Perdido in time.  
(Just lost in time)

What you don't know.  
Won't leave a scar.  
What you don't know.  
Hasn't killed you so far.  
But you don't know.  
Just who you are.  
Still I just give you something to talk about.

So you lost yourself.  
Turn to someone else.  
Now you've given up your will that wants to know.  
Then you find yourself.  
But you're someone else.  
In the end you only get what you deserve.  
(What you deserve)

ILL NINO "What you deserve"

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Mid morning sun baked the earth and wilted everything in its line of fire: both flowers and the girl perched on the swing, rocking gently as she watched the world go by.

Despite the heat, she felt relaxed, more at ease here under the gaze of the sun and various curious parents than she had in her own home over the past few days.

The bar creaked ominously overhead and she dragged her feet, slowing. A cool wind compensated for lost momentum.

The strain of secrecy was telling on her, eating away at her comfort, but it was less awkward and punishing than the tension that built slowly, day by day, grew into a monster.

Inoue swallowed dryly, resting her cheek against the worn rope.

Was she frightened? And what of?

She couldn't have answered the questions if they'd been asked of her, couldn't answer even in her own head.

They lingered restlessly anyway, impatient for some stroke of inspiration.

_Swing, swing._

He was tense as a storm building at sea, and she was receptive to that, sympathetic by nature. Maybe that was it. Maybe it wasn't her who was afraid, but him.

The second question prodded her and her curiosity hopefully.

Of what was _he_ afraid?

The old swing - centrepiece of the children's playground and tired now - groaned lugubriously under her weight, but she ignored its plight, too absorbed in her own problems to devote energy to personifying her surroundings.

Soon enough she'd have to face them, and face them down.

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A man whose aura tended towards the thundercloud side of the spectrum on the best of days, Grimmjow's bad mood was only remarkable by contrasting severity.

The window rattled, its unsteady, penetrating rhythm carrying on in his skull even after the wind had died reluctantly to silence.

He blinked slowly, and let his hands continue their activity.

Inoue watched him from the doorway, feeling too unnoticed to be an intruder in her own home and too dismayed to just walk away.

His fingers were surprisingly agile, tying knot after knot into the surplice fabric hanging off the couch. It looked studded.

He might have seemed at his least destructive, merely distracted, if it wasn't for the shattered ornaments on the floor – a clock, a little ship in a bottle, the tiny man who had split in two to reveal a smaller man, who split again and so on and was now shattered irreparably. The latter two had been presents from her brother, souvenirs from some far off place she'd never see.

She mourned them silently, knowing that if this was a sign of Grimmjow's loss of temper she could have come home to find the smoking ruin of her house, rather than her mantelpiece.

She was wise enough to say nothing, to wait him out, although blood thundered loudly in her ears, and she couldn't deny the fear of what he would do next.

He blinked again.

She knew the expressionless set of his face from her spell in Hueco Mundo, from the moments before his spontaneous, blood splattered rescue. She wanted to run, but he was just sitting there, and her feet seemed anchored to the ground, so she settled for swallowing.

_And the bunny goes into the hole_. Knot. Knot. His fingers told her a story in Sora's voice; his face said nothing.

He was running out of fabric to tie; the last knot pulled tight and hovered briefly, aimless.

Inoue took a hesitant step forwards as his hands fell limply to his sides, meek and helpful and uncertain.

She was burned back into place by the fury of his glare.

"How."

He pulled the covering away from its springs, taking a firm, two handed grip.

"Did."

He started to pull, the noise of ripping, tearing material not even beginning to hide the bite in his voice.

"You_, bitch_."

Every time he came to a knot he would deviate slightly, twisting between them expertly.

"Screw up?"

He dropped the masterpiece to the floor. She saw that he'd come full circle with his destruction, leaving only ragged tatters. She didn't miss the threat.

Meekness wouldn't mollify, helpfulness wouldn't help, and it was far too late to run.

She opted for the truth instead.

"I don't think it's me," she said.

His head snapped up.

"What?"

A snarl was taking possession of his mouth, his voice, his whole posture.

"You're saying it's me. You're saying _I'm _the one screwing with _my own_ head?"

He jumped violently to his feet, and although he hadn't yet touched her, she felt knocked backwards.

"N-no. I just think…it might just take time, Grimmjow!"

_His hand shot out, taking its customary place against her neck. This time, she couldn't gulp. Time slowed._

Then he let go, sudden as air returning to her lungs. Threw up both hands and started to laugh, a horrible, ringing sound.

Inoue thought of being curled warmly up in an armchair at Tatsuki's house, watching dramas and movies packed with villains who had mad, pseudo evil laughs – Mwa ha ha ha, fu fu fu, whichever happened to be more fitting. This was nothing like that. It was equally far removed from her own laugh, or that of any one of her friends.

Grimmjow was definitely not a happy camper.

Involuntarily, incomprehensibly, she reached out to him, hands, fingers, straining forwards.

Brushed his skin.

_He was so cold. _

The laugh slowed, grinding to a halt like a landslide running out of room to fall. His fingers rose, wrapping around her wrists gently.

He yanked her hands away, throwing them into empty air.

And fled.

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It was a case of bad timing all round, Inoue thought as she ushered Tatsuki into her humble abode. Her best friend blinked, startled by the conspicuous lack of decoration in the main room, and then did a double take at the even more conspicuous lack of couch. Inoue winced.

"Where's your couch?" Tatsuki asked, jumping straight to the point. But Inoue had put some careful thought into this.

"I, um, I wanted a new one," she said guiltily.

"And the rest of your stuff?" her friend probed suspiciously.

"Er…it didn't match the new couch?"

"There isn't a new couch," said Tatsuki, looking around in bewilderment.

"I ordered it," Inoue waved her hands desperately, and when her friend opened her mouth to push further she cut her off – as politely as possible, of course.

"C'mon, Tatsuki, let's not talk about couches! Um…so, have you and Keigo hooked up yet?"

The ensuing explosion made the storm she'd faced down earlier seem quite temperate by comparison.

Inoue was receiving the strong impression she'd have a major migraine by nightfall.

She was also worried. Grimmjow would probably collapse with terminal indignation if he ever discovered that little fact, but it was only the truth. She'd become accustomed to his brooding presence over her shoulder.

And now Tatsuki, for once, was talking straight over her head. All Orihime could make out was a faint humming through the buzz in her ears.

She wondered when she'd get the chance to redecorate. Maybe she should use more _boy_ colours. That would make him happier to stay, wouldn't it? She could let him pick out a couch.

Was he going to come back?

Would she like him to? She hadn't invited him to come, or to go. He did as he would, with little or no consideration of other people and their feelings, their thoughts.

Perhaps she could –

"Hey, Orihime! Earth to Orihime!"

Snap, snap, blink blink. Tatsuki's fingers moved in front of her face impatiently.

"What is wrong with you today, space girl?" Her friend asked irritably. She started to babble a denial – what's wrong, _nothing's wrong, what could be wrong, hahaha? – _when she caught the transition from concerned to mischievous in Tatsuki's expression.

"Boy trouble?"

Well, it was one way of putting it, she thought miserably.

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_Days pass with customary pomp and circumstance, and she floats, undecided._

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"Hey, Orihime?"

Inoue paused in the hallway, caught uncomfortably between the art folder Tatsuki always described as _mega ass huge _and her school bag, which had seemed to have expanded somewhat since the year began. She tried a happy smile on for size.

"Kurosaki-kun!"

Ichigo glowered down at her with his usual pleasant expression.

"Yeah, Inoue..." he waved a hand airily. "I just wanna ask... have you seen anything strange lately?"

Inoue tried not to look disappointed. She managed confusion. It was at least a little manufactured, and shot through with guilt - _what, strange like a rampaging Espada throwing a tantrum in my apartment, strange like that? - _but it seemed to pass muster. Ichigo nodded.

"Yeah, like any of the Arrancar we let live hanging around here?"

"Um, no," lied Inoue, certain that the blush that had sprung up as he summoned her had by now conquered every last bit of paleness in her complexion. "What makes you ask that, haha?"

His furrowed look deepened slightly.

"Well, I got a message from old man whatever, the Shinigami boss man. He said they're still monitoring the Espada, but if I noticed them causing any problems I had to contact him, and the Shinigami would move in. Old man thinks I'm their nanny or something...

"Anyway, I asked him how I would know what they're doing, and he said the only reason they're acting so leniently was that all the rowdy ones are hanging around nearby, so they've got a Captain level Shinigami in the field ready to step in at any time."

"Nearby?" she asked cautiously. So Soul Society had known he was there after all. That was...good. "But if they're all together..."

"You think they might be planning something? Well, maybe, but it's not like any of them are team players, and without Aizen - and the old man says they haven't been in contact."

Ichigo rubbed at the back of his neck. "So I just thought I'd ask you, in case they'd been bothering you."

Inoue gave that some thought. All the questions she'd been plagued with for the last month, all the confusion...Ichigo was smiling at her so kindly, concerned for her...

But someone needed her help, and she so, so wanted to do something for herself for once.

She wanted to face those fears down.

"No," she said. "I'm fine."

And if anyone noticed that that Inoue girl was crying on her way home, they were far too tactful to pay any attention.

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She heard him come in at maybe a quarter past midnight.

_He's just broken the lock off again. _

It claimed first place in all of the thoughts that sprang into her head as she woke up, although she would have preferred something like _oh no, that's right, it's Saturday_. It came with a measure of relief for all that.

Tiptoeing through the moonlight, she ventured a glance round the door frame, and smiled at the sight of him. Maybe it was the set of his shoulders that amused her, the realisation that this look was almost sheepish.

"You stay up, chick?" If he was ashamed or embarrassed, he did a good job of hiding it from his vocal cords. They sounded as acerbic as always.

She shook her head, ready to duck back into her room if it looked like he wanted to be alone. Instead he beckoned her over.

"You may have been right after all," he muttered. Inoue jumped at that.

"You've remembered something!" She smiled, waving her hands excitedly. "But how did-"

"Sort of," he interrupted. Yes, that was embarrassment, after all. She cocked her head.

"Grimmjow san…what did you remember?"

Had it been any other time, he would never have told her, she knew that, but this was the first coherent fragment of his life, and she thought he might want to talk about it. She wasn't likely to gossip to anyone, after all.

"It was…"

It was actually rather stunning, to think of helping someone regain their whole _life. _A true use for her, after all.

"I remember having a…a…"

"Yes?" Inoue leaned forwards, wholly entranced.

"A cat," he finished.

"Really?" She blinked the anticlimax away, genuinely excited that he recalled that much. It was kind of…fitting, now she came to think of it.

"What was she called?"

"It was a he," he said, raising an eyebrow. "Why would you care?"

"Just tell me," Inoue brushed that off expectantly. "Come on, don't be shy…"

A very strange expression flickered across his face for a second, and then he answered.

"Jack," he said.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"How…"

"What?"

"Fitting."

And that seemed to be what had come of them also.

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AN: I hope no one's disappointed...

Reviews bring light into a dark place, i.e. exam season. Hopeful eyes

Oh yeah, and that mega ass huge art folder comes from personal experience. Ouch.


	5. Tale 4

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

Tale 4: Chastity Belt

Meet me after dark again and I'll hold you  
I want nothing more than to see you there  
And maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away,  
We'll be lost before the dawn...

If only night could hold you where I can see you, my love  
Then let me never ever wake again  
And maybe tonight, we'll fly so far away  
We'll be lost before the dawn...

Somehow I know that we can't wake again from this dream,  
It's not real, but it's ours.

"Before the Dawn" Evanescence

The sun had melted, leaving sickly yellow trails through the clouds as it descended, awkwardly accompanied by salmon pink. Halibel took a long look at the newly introduced human world, undefended as it was, and a long breath to compliment her bemusement.

She was as unimpressed by sunsets as Grimmjow had been by stars, and like him, found that her own reaction rang with the tone of the true liar. It was puzzling, her curious desire to find such accessories of nature magnificent, but not so engaging as to drive her mission from her mind.

"I leave the details up to you," he'd said, and the authority in his voice had sounded as flat and affected as the sun looked to her from here, his attempt to take the tones of his master falling flat. Tousen would better spend his time plotting, if he intended to step up to Aizen's throne. Perhaps, like her, he no longer saw his way so clearly; if he allowed it to cloud his judgment she would be well advised to abandon his schemes and carve her own way – but collared by Soul Society, chained to earth as a bird with its wings clipped, Halibel did not see her way at all.

She would ensure that Tousen succeeded, one way or another.

"Do not kill anyone else – particularly not the girl."

Said as though she was as wanton as she was designed to be, and so many of her brethren were. Then the final touch - the upheld hand, the return to his old certainty, and "Justice will be served, Halibel."

His love of those words was inexplicable to her – Justice, truth. Freedom.

As much use to wish to cage the sun in your hands, halting its fall, or for a broken bird to long to fly.

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"What are you doing here?"

His voice was sharp, clipped and jealous. Foolish, careless man, taking this place for territory without ever even noticing.

She had never precisely seen eye to eye with Grimmjow, but she had trouble believing that he could have become so complacent so quickly, allowing Soul Society to dictate to him with no sign of a struggle, loitering around Inoue Orihime, the human girl, with no sign of coercion. No doubt he was up to something.

She held no ill will to him, despite the occasions when his headstrong manner had grated on her nerves, and would have invited him to join their plan freely - but for Tousen.

Tousen had other ideas on Grimmjow's ultimate fate. He despised her brother, had always and would always reject the nature the blue haired man embodied. He disliked most of the Arrancar, but he seemed to harbour a personal vendetta against the sixth which went beyond his professed moral revulsion.

Privately, Halibel agreed with Grimmjow's own assessment; Tousen just plain didn't like him, would probably have disliked him had he been a most unlikely saint. It was a case of total attitude clash.

In different circumstances, it would have been quite amusing.

A shame.

She let a lengthy pause take root after his question, giving it due consideration.

"I could say the same," she concluded finally. "For what purpose are you using the human girl?"

"None o' your business," he threw back, an odd mix of belligerence and flippancy. She nodded as though he'd given her a proper answer.

"Yes, it is. Follow me."

Grimmjow's eyes narrowed, as eternally suspicious as the least of their kind, even as his mouth curled into a mocking smirk. There was definitely something he was hiding here, something he was defending.

"I'm kinda busy at the moment. You're welcome to come back on a rainy day, though."

She had the time to deal with his insubordination, but not the inclination.

"You _will_ come, Grimmjow."

"Like hell I will. What do you want, anyway?"

"I intend to fight you."She rolled her eyes. Had they been any other kind of siblings it might have been mistaken for affection.

Grimmjow's attitude of bored scorn brightened.

"Why didn't you say so from the start?" he demanded - and his new, protective attitude vanished back into the grin she knew well.

She led him away from the main streets, located a conveniently empty alley, and continued their conversation from where they'd left off - wordlessly.

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He paused, using the alley wall as a useful prop to nonchalance, and spat blood. She'd split his lip badly in their last bout – and that was the least of his problems.

She had a bruise spreading over her jaw, but he felt more triumph over having ripped away that stupid collar. It wasn't like she was modest or anything, the face was about the only thing that _was _covered.

What that said about Halibel's psychological state, Grimmjow didn't want to guess. He settled for continuing to attempt to beat her back onto her nicely rounded ass.

She was a warrior, not just a fighter, and fought accordingly; clever, quick, powerful. Several ranks above him too, for all that Aizen's little war game had fallen apart. He was not afraid, but an edge of concern kept trying to make itself heard through adrenalin.

He lunged, using his greater body weight to bear down on her blade, but they both knew Halibel was far too experienced to fall for such an obvious trick, disengaging and kicking him thoughtfully in the knee as she jumped back to avoid the Cero he spat at her over their swords. Grimmjow grunted.

"Not that I'm complaining," he said, deflecting her returning blows, "but what _do _ya want? Didn't think the high an' mighty Halibel would drop by just for a chat and a workout."

He missed a block and rolled with the punch, grabbing her arm as he went, sending them both toppling together to concrete.

"I'm here as a warning." She informed him coolly from her position, sprawled over him. He tried to roll, to heave her off, but she bounced hard into his stomach and raked a sword tip along a guarding arm, and instead they shifted sideways, lying nose to nose on the floor and scrabbling for purchase.

Neither was used to fighting this way – too close, too confined, and he put it down to inexperience when she failed to prevent him slamming a foot hard into her knee and a hand into her throat, all muffled up with fabric which was no longer white.

Again they rolled, this time with him coming up tops, and the beat in his ears was thudding almost too loud and fast for him to hear the muffled gasp from behind him, from the alley mouth.

He cursed himself the instant he lifted his head to inspect this new factor, knowing how fatal it was to get distracted in this kind of match – and cursed doubly when he found that the intruders really hadn't been worth the risk. An indignant looking girl, a blushing boy, vaguely familiar but of little immediate relevance. He had expected someone higher on his checklist of worthwhile persons, since they could obviously see them, but about the only thing of note was that the girl had maroon hair. It was an odd sort of hair colour, but then he could hardly talk, could he?

It took him a few blank instants before he registered _why_ both looked rather flushed, and whipped his eyes back to his opponent with a disgust more than half directed at himself.

Stupid presuming humans.

Stupid presuming Grimmjow, taking it as read that Halibel wouldn't use the second or so of your distraction to tear your head off, idiot human witnesses or no.

But it was only when those witnesses had brushed on by, leaving 'get a room' hanging in the air behind them, that she slammed her sword through his side.

Grimmjow slid sideways, not forgetting to tighten his fingers around her neck, but it was no good. Too late. Death loomed, coffee coloured and beautiful. She'd never been his type.

"Hmm." She stood, slightly laboured.

"That all ya gonna say?" he rasped. "Then get on with it. Don't waste my time."

"You always were impudent," she answered. "No. I told you, Grimmjow Jaggerjack, that this was merely a warning. Do not interfere."

"Inter- interfere in what?" he heaved himself up onto one elbow, glaring as best he could. Haibel didn't seem impressed, somehow.

"That which does not concern you. I advise you to get that treated."

And the snooty, obscure female jackass actually had the nerve to walk calmly away, as if they hadn't been engaged in trying to rip out each other's throats only minutes before. Grimmjow choked back blood and curses, driving himself to his feet and staggering in the direction of home.

It was useful, this time, to have something to aim for.

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"That which does not concern you?" Inoue frowned, hazy through a golden glow that dragged the aches from muscles and bones and closed the door behind them, dusting away the memory. "That isn't very useful…"

She really was convenient to have around, this chick.

"Do you know what she meant, Grimmjow?"

"Nope," he lied cheerfully. "Get on with it, will you?"

"But she might come back," Inoue said plaintively, finishing up. "And – if you'd given someone a warning and they ignored it, wouldn't you skip giving any more warnings and just – stop them?"

"In that case, she should try harder to make actual sense," he growled. "Drop it, Orihime."

Her eyes went immediately to his face, wide and searching. He looked away, and she sighed softly. Her fairy friends had returned to their proper places before he looked at her again.

"Be more careful next time," she said, meeting his gaze, and then fled before he could scold her.

"Heh." Grimmjow slid to his feet, shaking his head. Crazy woman.

His eyes caught one of her old school photos, artistically strewn around the apartment. He'd become accustomed to letting his gaze skim past random visions of her and her friends arranged in all their scholarly glory, but this time something about it struck him as relevant – oh, yes. There. A flash of maroon, carefully posed not far from a brainless looking boy with brown hair.

Well, damn. That's where he'd seen them before. Probably explained why they had seen _him_, then, as that was definitely Kurosaki's dumbass face looking put-upon from under the bunny ears the other boy was holding above his head.

He did a quick double take, registering the maroon girl's position behind an oblivious Inoue, the hands surely only inches away from Inoue's substantial –

Get a freaking room, indeed. He'd had some close encounters with audacity himself, but doing _that _in a school photo?

Cue Inoue's re-entry into the room, cheerful and breezy, obviously having estimated the possible duration of his temper to be far shorter than it actually was. Luckily enough for her, he had a distraction currently displayed under his nose.

"What is this, woman?" he asked. She leaned around him curiously.

"What – Oh! It's a school photo, Grimmjow-san. You see, when you end a school year, you want to keep the memories of it safe. So we have pictures to remind us of that."

"I know that," he said impatiently. "What is _this_?"- indicating the offending section – "That's some precious memory, is it?"

Inoue blinked down at the immortalised groping, and then blushed. He half expected her to declare that she'd never noticed it before.

"That's Chizuru. She's… very friendly."

"That much I can see."

"I thought about not getting this one," Inoue said thoughtfully. "The photographer took quite a few. But it just seemed more authentic than the others, where the teachers made everyone look sensible. I wanted a real memory, not a pretend one."

"So you picked the one wherein you got groped," Grimmjow deadpanned. Inoue coughed.

"It does sound pretty bad when you say it like that," she pouted, raising a finger to her lips. "But…to be honest…I sometimes think I dream too much as it is."

Grimmjow watched the mock pout fade into sobriety, she stared out past him, wistful and just a little sorrowful.

That was Kurosaki's mark in her eyes, sure enough, and he felt his blood pressure rise. It pissed him off to no end to see so much of his enemy ingrained in this girl he had to spend all his time with, had grown to _not actively despise_. She was alright, was Inoue – when she wasn't mooning over Ichigo.

And then she turned her eyes back to him, star bright.

"Do you dream of things, Grimmjow-san?"

The sharp smell of burning was what dogged his dreams, in fact, as did countless skies; starstruck, clear or stormy, dawn or dusk. Then there was that blasted cat, an obsequious, lazy, lecherous feline with a wife in every port. He'd loved that cat.

He wondered why all the only memories he could hold on to were the useless ones.

He was also aware that none of this was what she meant.

"Nah," he said. "Not really."

"Oh," she sighed. "That's sad too, Grimmjow-san."

"You talk too much."

"But it's good to have dreams!" she declared, informative and indignant. "Just as long as…they have some chance of coming true."

A return to the mopes. She fiddled with some strands of hair. Grimmjow looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

"_Che. _You're pretty gloomy company, ain't ya?" he asked mockingly. She laughed a little.

"I used to dream of flying," she murmured. "I went up to the playground – it has a climing frame in the shape of an aeroplane – and I'd stand on top of it and pretend I was miles up, floating between the clouds."

What the hell was an a_eroplane_?

"What's an aeroplane?"

She giggled. "It's a flying machine."

"Oh."

If there was a human invention for one thing, there were millions for another. He decided not to go down that route of inquiry.

"It ain't all that great, you know."

"Hmm?"

"Floating between the clouds. Kinda damp. Anyway, if you want it so bad, why don't you just go ask Kurosaki to give you a ride?"

In all respects possible - maybe then she'd be less depressed, once she'd got it over with. But the innuendo whizzed right over her head.

"I don't want to be carried," she mused. "It's not really flying if you're being carried."

If there was anything Inoue _did not _wish to be, it was excess baggage.

Grimmjow shrugged. If that was the way she felt, it was too bad her powers had manifested in the way they had. Touch luck for her.

A thought meandered in then, and he gave her adverted features a diffident look. Would it work? He analysed everything he knew about reiatsu control, and drew a blank. He should perhaps have actually listened when Szayel was talking, rather than spacing out. Still, there was no harm in trying, since now that the idea had struck he was curious as to its possibilities.

He just hoped he didn't accidentally blow her up. That might be a bit hard to explain to all her nosy Shinigami pals.

Cautiously, while she was engaged in staring fondly down at the photograph, he reached out and brushed a finger across the back of her neck, concentrating.

"Grimmjow?" She shivered slightly at his touch, forgetting her precious honorifics in disquiet; it reminded him of the past, the times he'd had her pulse pounding against his hand, and the anger in her eyes.

He answered by grinning broadly, pleased with his success. She followed his eyes down.

"Oh!"

Grimmjow didn't know anyone else who would just _not notice _that they were floating until it was pointed out.

"Like it?" he smirked, straightening his arm until he was suspending her several feet in the air.

"How?" she asked, delight rolling into her face like waves breaking, making her look ridiculously childish.

"I'm focusing my reiatsu under your feet," he answered. "Wasn't even sure it was possible. Congratulations, you're a successful experiment."

She seemed absurdly happy about that. He amused himself by watching the transparent joy play across the planes of her face as he bounced her around the room by her collar like a novelty balloon.

It wasn't nearly as much fun as beating the hell out of her boyfriend, but he was willing to take what he could get.

He certainly had no intention of helping her out with any of her other dreams.

Orihime continued to smile so hard her face ached for the remainder of the day. She _was_ struck by how odd it was to feel indebted to this man, one of the few she'd harboured a genuine dislike for only months ago, but she didn't let it trouble her for long. She'd made her choice, and unlike her companion, Inoue had no intention of looking back, not this time.

Grimmjow, whatever else he may have been, had become a friend. He made her feel stronger, and a little independent. It was an interesting contrast to the undercurrents that drove her relationship with Kurosaki-kun that she wanted those things, not just for the sake of her friends and their unimpeded forward motion, but for herself. It was good to have both. It was good not to be carried everywhere.

She'd put a girdle around the earth – just as soon as he'd finished teaching her how to fly.

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AN: Thankyou, Thankyou very much. Incidentally, I LOVE long reviews. Don't apologise!

Inexplicable Fluff and Shakesphere paraphrase FTW.

Alright, obsure title explanation here, since my sister demanded it. Chastity belt refers to the ending line about putting a girdle around the Earth, being a pun on Inoue's innocence. It could also be applied to Halibel's warning, which was essentially telling Grimmjow to back off Inoue, for currently unknown reasons. Oh look, plot. He's now suspicious...the - just introduced - plot thickens...

Also, I apologise if I made Halibel rather dry. I write her the same way as I write Ulquiorra...hm. Hope you enjoyed.


	6. Tale 5

Disclaimer: I own nothing :(

Tale 5: The monster under 

Will it change your life if I change my mind?  
When she's lit the whole wide world  
I want to know if you will beg me and then tell me how to love you  
like anybody else would  
I know you're risking failure,

but I'd hope you set your levels  
so you can run for cover,  
you better start to love her.  
Now are we this pathetic? You made me finally see it.  
(Will it change your life when I change my mind,

will it change your mind when I change my life?)

Beg – Evans Blue

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There had been days, lately, when she'd thought he'd leave again.

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Inoue padded quietly over night chilled floors, summoned from her comfortable pillow castle by the growls escaping softly from his room into hers.

She wasn't sure what she'd expected, or expected to be able to do, but she'd foreseen enemies, envisioned a whole army camped outside.

Instead, it was as peaceful as any house ideally is at about 3 in the morning. The street outside was deserted and her long time visitor was sprawled out, tossing and turning through variations on his usual, sprawling sleeping pose. The growls were louder inside the room with him and her own hands were trembling as she reached out to touch his shoulder. She was gentle, because at this time and in this place he seemed more like a ghost than he ever had before. She didn't want him to fade at her touch.

She didn't even achieve an extra flinch.

He was sweating, and although when his eyelids fluttered she met the angry blue they sheltered, the searchlight seemed to pass straight through her.

Barely a shadow cast, barely a ripple made on his mental landscape. She was sure that, even awake, at this point he'd hardly recognise her.

And so, amazed at her own daring, she leaned closer until her breath lighted on his cheek, tickling sweetly. She shut her own eyes, gathering resolve, and breath, to shout out his name into his ear.

Inoue was more stunned than grateful, but had she given the matter some thought, she would have admitted that her intended victim's choice to sit up at that moment was benificial to both of them. Their skulls cracking together violently, painful as it was, was preferable to the nebulous but probably permanent vengeance he would have taken having been half deafened.

He glared down at her with more puzzlement than anger as she sprawled dazedly on the floor.

"_What_ were you doing?"

"Er…Waking you up?"

Grimmjow poked his forehead gingerly.

"By head butting me?"

Inoue found it vaguely disturbing that his voice carried overtones of resignation, as though she went around head butting people all the time. Her reply was slightly indignant.

"But _you_ head butted _me_, Grimmjow san!"

"Why?" he asked, kneading his forehead. Inoue blinked, looking ridiculously dopey and drawing another crease of irritation onto his face.

"Well, I don't know. Did I do something to offend you?"

Maybe cracking the skull of a woman with such obviously fragile IQ had been ill considered, considering that he still had to live with her.

"Are you serious?" He caught the widening of her big brown eyes just in time. Couldn't have her crying all over him. "Forget it. Why were you trying to wake me up?"

"Weren't you having a bad dream?"

His eyes narrowed, and it took a few seconds for the predatory grin to take shape.

"Nope. Not bad at all. I guess Gotei's tenth division ain't up to much, after all."

Slow as he might have thought her, Inoue knew when to retreat. And retreat she did. If there were enemies here, they'd been armed and deployed from within his own head.

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_Aizen's hand rested on his shoulder, companionable. His master was too subtle a puppeteer to put any real force behind the gesture; it was Grimmjow's imagination only that ground the bones together until they burned. He knew Aizen registered all the tension, the fear in the set of his muscles, the anticipation. The ex-Shinigami patted him reassuringly. _

_It was worse than the pain, the blatant show of power. He hated it. _

_How he hated it. _

_And Aizen smiled._

"_Was it a good dream, my son? You seemed content. I was sorry to wake you." _

_The smile stood._

"_May I ask what it was about? Some other life, perhaps?"_

_Grimmjow knew, knew that this was the dream, turning everything on its head. He knew that this world had fallen, they'd lost, but he was still winning, because Aizen was Dead. _

_But the Shinigami wasn't the kind to let that stop him. _

_He was the kind to haunt, and suggest, and infest with doubt everything free of him._

_Grimmjow shook his head._

"_Don't remember."_

_But he wasn't willing to let go so easily, whichever way the dreamland inversion went. _

_He started to rise, uncomfortable slumped on his back with Aizen looming overhead – _and was almost grateful as his head cracked together with the ever accidental Inoue Orihime.

He didn't even lie, not really. He wasn't Aizen. Still she gave him a look of suspicion and shrewdness, a look which she had no business possessing, no business at all. If she ever got the idea that she was astute he'd have no peace ever again. It would no doubt resurrect that blasted 'Woman's intuition' business, which, like so much of this new life he'd found, bordered on the ridiculous.

_And still, he was unwilling to let go…of any of it. _

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"_And what makes you think I'd have any interest in your social life, woman?"_

"_Um…woman's intuition?"_

"_What?"_

_1_

"_Where the hell did you get the idea of putting leek in pancakes, again?"_

"_Oh! It came to me through divine woman's inspiration!"_

"…_You're making that up…"_

_Although after a careful consideration of all her other dishes, the pancakes kinda…grew on you. She seemed to think so too, she kept making them. _

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"_So I think that Uryu kun _likes _Rukia chan…"_

_He surfaced briefly from his doze at that. "What? Four eyes?" Where did you pull that fro - Oh, wait, let me guess. Your precious woman's intuition, right?"_

"_Yup! How did you know? That was the first time it happened to me. See, he made her this really cute-"_

"_Whatever, chick. Send it back, it's defective. If that Uryu kid ever unbent enough to care about anyone, it'd obviously be-"_

_He paused, more than half of him refusing to believe that he was actually having this conversation, and looked into the crystal clarity of her eyes. _

"_Obviously, he's gay for Ichigo", he finished. _

_To her credit, she hadn't believed him. But she had told the pair all about the 'rumour' going round about them, just in case. She did a credible imitation of Ichigo shrieking when she reported it back to him. _

_This chick was getting _evil_._

_That made her more dangerous, what with the sideline possibility of shrewdness, but he never considered leaving. They had business to finish. _

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For once, she wasn't crying. She had her nose scrunched up somewhat, and her lips held a slight downward tilt, and there were shadows moving over her face as lights from the windows slipped past, car after car. Or maybe it was the trees growing close to the glass swaying instead, darkness copied and pasted onto her face, changing like a kaleidoscope. It didn't suit her at all.

Anyway, she was anchored in the middle of all that, very still, her chest rising and falling slowly, but the effect wasn't peaceful. She just seemed like she was making her surroundings do the work for her.

He stayed in the doorway, and she never looked at him. He was grudgingly aware that she didn't even know he was there. He cast barely a shadow, barely a ripple on her moods, did he? She drew her everything from her adored friends, and more still from Kurosaki.

He didn't need to guess what was wrong, and wouldn't have bothered trying if it wasn't blindingly obvious. Her blankets were strewn away from her, dead marble in quiet moonlight, splattered with dark splotches because of the way the rain stuck to the window pane. She just sat there in the tangle. Her eyes had caged and displayed all the spooks of the past, all that nice, torrid darkness he'd helped bring her.

Perhaps that tingle going down his spine was remorse, although he rather doubted it. He preferred the annoyance.

She looked so much like a child; not frightened, but using her numbness as a shield, a weapon, as only the innocent can. Still trapped and burdened.

And there he was; a bystander, inexplicably unable to stop bystanding.

He felt victimised.

She finally looked at him, quick darting eyes that were ashamed, and the knowledge that she didn't want him there made him feel better as he stepped into her room. It made two of them.

"Why do you bother having nightmares?" he asked, watching her not move, not even a little. "You're living with one."

He wasn't bragging. It was the simple truth. She didn't seem to have an answer for that yet, instead busying herself with tugging at her duvet until it slid around her shoulders.

"I tried not to wake you…"

_If you apologise again, girl…I'll shatter this almost peace we've got, here and now. I'll just leave you here._

"Grimmjow-san. Do you think I'm weak?"

"How do you mean?" He assumed she didn't want to know that he could easily snap her neck in an instant. No. She was looking for some other sort of answer with this, one he wasn't at all sure he was equipped to deal with. Stupid woman, expecting anything of him.

"I'm still losing…" She chewed on a finger, staring into nothing, straight through him.

Grimmjow knew now what she meant. The whole concept irritated him, and so did the solution. On the other hand…

He watched her carefully, resolving not to think at all about what he was going to do. _Think about something else, something pleasant. Like...Drop kicking Aizen-sama's rotten corpse to Mars. Maybe further._

Fixing said charming image firmly before his eyes, he ignored both their protests and picked her up, den of sheets and all, slung the lot over his shoulder, and set off into her kitchen.

Orihime wriggled at first, but went limp painfully quickly.

"What are you doing?" she asked. There was a fair amount of genuine curiosity in her voice: he smirked but gave no answer, and she indulged him by wriggling again.

"Grimmjow?"

He dumped her unceremoniously on the small chair she kept in there, presumably in case she came across a particularly exhausting stir fry, leaving her bewildered but perhaps not quite as depressed. She shivered when he opened the freezer, light pouring out like thin syrup across both of them, and stared at what he retrieved.

There was nothing that Inoue knew of more surreal than having an Espada feed you ice cream, which he rapidly proceeded to do.

"Open," he demanded.

"Grimmjow -"

"Good."

"Mmff!" She wriggled again, this time in startlement and indignation, with a side order of brain freeze.

"Don't talk with your mouth full."

He crouched down beside her, bowl resting on one knee.

Silence reigned for several minutes, while outside the moon was muffled in downpour. He didn't remember becoming comfortable with her silences, but there it was.

"Grimmjow san?"

"What?"

"Thank you."

He didn't answer. Troubling developments these, both that she could slay her demons, murderous and manifold as they were, with choc chip ice cream, and that he'd _known _that this little session in food therapy and putting things into perspective would work. And actually bothered to try. That was bad too.

She was strong in soul after all, much as he deprecated the idea of emotional strength over power, and he was too close –

Nah. She was just obvious, that was all. He was in no danger of getting too attached to this foolish little girl. Hah. The idea.

Hah.

She smiled across at him, still waiting for a reply.

"It was nothing," he muttered. Nothing at all.

The smile broadened.

"I don't think I could get back to sleep," she murmured. He snorted.

"Alright, alright. You got _any _good films hidden in this house?"

And the storm swept on without them.

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AN: This time it's flangst FTW.

In reply to some of the reviews - the story will have 11 chapters total - the prologue, the nine 'tales', and then an epilogue. As for Grimmjow's past - shh, don't tell him. He hasn't figured it out yet. ;D

Moar reviews? -hopefull smile-


	7. Tale 6

Disclaimer: I don't own.

AN: I'm answering a question from one of the reviews here rather than at the bottom, because it applies to this chapter.

She refers to him as Grimmjow-san in this story partly to show how the dynamic has changed between them since the last time I remember her saying his name, which was when he was throttling her to get her to heal Ichigo, and partly because I like using different extremes of formality to show more subtle meaning in dialogue. Thank you for asking, and for attending to details. XD

Tale 6: Candid Castaway

Black and blue I chose my wave  
I, the candid castaway  
In a way delayed by one more broken season  
To find reason for appeasing you and

So I found my guiding light  
Lambent, flashing red and white  
Through a starry night I'm better nowhere-bound  
Than drowning on your solid ground

Satellite, save my life  
I'm wishing on a two-way radio  
Love might be just like me  
Jaded, waiting, all alone  
A whisper on a two-way radio

"Satellite", Anna Nalic

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"_Move it."_

_He looked down at the facetious appeal on the face of the other man, entirely unmoved. A prickle of amusement did spark, as the grizzled old man thrust out a lower lip and clasped his mug closer. _

"_But-" _

"_No buts, idiot. I'm not paying you to sit in a tavern drownin' your woes. You can do that where we're going just as easy, and be useful while you're about it. Move it, I said."_

"_All right, all right. Movin' it, Sir. See _you _later, sweetheart," the old man nodded to a coy and very pretty young lady who was in fact making eyes at his companion. She wrinkled her nose at him. Grimmjow hooked fingers through the old man's colourful jerkin and hauled him away, grinning._

"_That your wife, Ainsly?"_

"_That's her, sir. Pretty little thing, ain't she? Can't think why she had me." _

"_No," Grimmjow said, rolling his eyes. "Nor can I." _

And sat up, wide eyed, mystified, and cursing Inoue's alarm clock as it sounded loudly in the next room.

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"Why are humans so interested in sex?" Grimmjow asked absently, perched next to her on the arm of the chair, watching a scantily clad female promote the newest piece of techno-frippery with clinical interest.

Inoue choked on her slurpy.

It was a not good start to the morning. She tried to think of some reply that wouldn't make him give that Look, the one that suggested that she had something dribbling out of her ears.

"Well?" he asked, and just a hint of a wicked smile tugging at the corners of his mouth told her that she'd already amused him enormously.

"Idon'tknow," she said, and by way of changing the subject – "aren't Arrancar?"

He let his head fall back, staring up at the ceiling, and grinning, grinning. Orihime felt her blush go from moderate to blinding.

"Nah, not really. I mean, hollows are all about instinct, but it comes down to priority, right? For a hollow, killing everything in sight is much more of a kick than-"

"Oh, okay," she interrupted quickly. Grimmjow smirked, and let it drop.

Unfortunately for Inoue, her curiosity was almost as powerful a force as her modesty. She wriggled, uncomfortable.

"Go ahead and ask," Grimmjow said, doing an admirable job of keeping a straight face.

"Um…it always…I mean, I got the impression, with people like, well, Noitora, that they did kinda seem interested…in that."

"Noitora?" This time Grimmjow did laugh. "Yeah, he wishes. You know what his release form is?"

"A praying mantis?"

"That's right. Lucky him. Dude's got serious issues with the opposite gender."

"Oh." Inoue was fighting a smile herself now. "But he acts so -"

"Well, yeah. Whatever an Arrancar lacks, he's gotta make up for it with bravado. Law of the jungle."

"Oh."

They exchanged a conspiratory smile, and Inoue slung her bag over her shoulder.

"I gotta go," she waved. "See you after school."

"Sure."

Inoue half danced, half ran down the road, bag rattling against her back. She'd been leaving home rather behind schedule lately. If she kept it up, she might actually be late.

Cue horror. Maybe she should learn to drive…

"Orihime!" Tatsuki grabbed at her shoulders, slightly stunned by Inoue's special 'Avoid Gaggle of Seniors, Chizuru, and Falling Over, While Waving Frantically At Friends' move, perfected from the first week of high school but still enough to make her best friend nervous.

"What is with you, girl?" Tatsuki rolled her eyes expressively. "You're almost late."

"Really?" she craned her neck to look up at the clock. "I guess I got distracted."

"Oh yeah?" Tatsuki leaned back against the wall, eyes rolling yet again as Keigo staggered past with Mizuiro in a headlock. "Anything interesting? I could use a distraction."

_Talking about sex with the Espada installed in my living room. _Somehow Inoue didn't think that would go down well, particularly since Ichigo was hovering nearby with a dour, worried expression and all the attitude of a wallflower.

"Kurosaki-kun!" she declared, by way of tactical evasion, waving him over. "Is something wrong?"

"Huh? Oh, not really. Only – well – them."

He jerked a thumb over one shoulder, with great feeling, containing both an indication of the colourful little group shadowing his movements and all of his own displeasure within one curt gesture.

"Abarai-kun, Matsumoto-san, Hitsu – chan!" she declared happily, pleasantly oblivious of Hitsuguya's stricken twitch at his impromptu nickname. "Umm…why are you all here?"

They exchanged a look. Ichigo snorted, Tatsuki looked interested – she'd done her best to learn about Soul Society since Inoue's return, and these inadvertant ambassadors would be under her intense scrutiny until she came to the inevitable conclusion that they were all quite mad – and Orihime tried not to gulp. She had the strangest feeling that she _knew_ why they were there, now she came to think it over.

"Reconnaissance," replied Hitsuguya, staring at her in a way that she guiltily admitted was meaningful. "Although we'd prefer you didn't spread it around."

"O-Okay," she squeaked.

Maybe it was something to do with whatever Haibel was planning, the dark cloud hanging over her peaceful days. Maybe it was to do with the trouble already on her, and assimilating nicely.

She really hoped that they didn't tell Kurosaki-kun, either way. It would – ruin everything, wouldn't it? Grimmjow would get chased out, or be watched suspiciously enough that he'd stalk out on his own, just when it'd started to seem like he'd become a permanent fixture. The return of his memories was so gradual and halting that his total recall was a foggy landmark way out into the future, a bit like the world of work and marrying Kurosaki-kun. Her marrying Kurosaki kun, that was, not Grimmjow.

They all blinked when she giggled.

"And they won't tell me anything more than that," said Ichigo in peeved accents, as though answering her somewhat convoluted though process. "Must be something about the Arrancar hanging around. They're planning something. You know there's no way Shorty here would come back to school just for the fun of it."

Hitsuguya twitched a second time, eyes narrowing dangerously. Renji snickered

The three women backed off hastily, but not before Matsumoto had called out encouragement to her captain.

Tatsuki concluded over the noise that men were men, even the dead ones, and consigned the lot of them to oblivion. Orihime, upon realising that the subject had been firmly dropped, tried to hide her relief. She succeeded so well that neither of her companions seemed to notice anything wrong, or at least nothing more wrong than it ever was in high school. But later, after school had finished, Matsumoto drew her briefly aside.

Inoue felt her heart banging against her ribs, wondering if she was expected to house the Shinigami and her Captain again. At any other time she'd be delighted, but now…

"Orihime." The older woman had assumed her serious, wise expression, one that Inoue instinctively reacted to with trust and openness. "Is there anything you'd like to tell us?"

_But you know already,_Orihime thought, confused. _What do you want me to say? _

She waited solemnly for an answer, parallel to Matsumoto, and then realised there would be no clarification coming. It was obviously a subject to be edged around.

"Nothing I can think of," she said calmly, finally. "Is something wrong?"

More wrong than it ever is, in high school, with trouble assimilating into your living room?

"No. But if you ever feel that something is, here's the number of the hotel the captain and I are staying at." She offered a small scrap of paper. "Be careful, Orihime."

The girl nodded sombrely, then lifted her chin. "You too, Matsumoto – san."

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"What did she say?" Hitsuguya asked as he examined their room critically, evidently looking for a distraction. Matsumoto sighed, uncharacteristically grave.

"Nothing, really." She prodded a pillow irritably. "I don't get what she's up to. We know that Grimmjow and Haibel made contact, we're monitoring both. Haibel's with a group of other Arrancar now. Why don't we move in?"

"Because we known that someone's organising them. Tousen and Gin both got away at the end of the war. If we wait for them to make a move-"

"Using Orihime as bait!" Matsumoto dropped onto the bed, slumping amongst luxuriant cushions. "I don't know what she's thinking, though. That Espada's been there for months, but I don't get the feeling she's being threatened. And she isn't telling me anything."

"Hmm." Hitsuguya sat on the sofa and glowered at her. "More to the point…why the hell did you only book one room?"

"Why, captain!" the irrepressible Matsumoto fluttered her eyelashes. "I'm on a budget. Besides, I'm sure you can be trusted to be a gentleman."

"Bah!"

"Anyway, it's not one room. It's a suite, with a bathroom and everything. It isn't every day that a Captain gets to share the honeymoon suite with his vice-captain!"

"Please," Hitsuguya groaned, kicking her suitcase under the bed. "Don't remind me."

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Nel smiled at Urahara with a sweetness he would have previously considered unlikely in an Arrancar, and examined the slightly lopsided arrangement of bandages crowning her head.

"So they have special properties?" she asked, just for the chance to fill the silence; he'd explained twice, once to her child form and once to her restored adult self. Urahara smiled back. "Yes, I'm sorry they've taken so long to develop, but it's been pretty busy around here. They should prevent any more of your spirit pressure leaking until you heal properly, and help you retain form even when you're low on reiatsu. Have fun!"

"Thank you!" she declared happily.

"No, thank you, for a very interesting case. To be honest, I thought you'd got straight to Inoue-san with this, so I'm truly grateful you agreed to be a test subject. It really is facinating…"

She laughed; despite her negative relations with the Espada's sole scientist, Syazel, Nel couldn't help but like Urahara. She was still smiling as he shooed her cheerfully off his premises.

"So now what?" she murmured. Ichigo – the jerk – was hunched over homework and being no fun at all. She had been given the impression that she made his sisters uncomfortable, too, whether it was because she was a walking talking example of the monsters in the night they'd only recently had confirmed, or just another example of a girl Ichigo had brought home. Must be weird for them. Teehee. Ichigo the player.

Quite the opposite applied to their father. She got a strange feeling of _depth _when she looked into his eyes, so often shaped into some expression of harmless foolishness, as though two faces looked back at her. Ichigo and the girls seemed oblivious.

Last but by no means least, it got so wearing beating sense into Kon. At least her periodic childlike transformations had given her some respite from that.

She was being stalked by a stuffed toy. Where was her dignity?

All in all, Ichi's house without Ichi was out. Instead she rather thought she'd drop in at Inoue's. It had been a while since she'd seen the girl.

Warmed by a rush of affection towards the shy, cheerful young woman whose rescue had led to her own, she set off towards Orihime's house. Most optimistically, as it happened, for she got lost three times on the way, was waylaid by some back alley lurkers attempting to mug her, and recieved the directions to the correct part of town from the police station. By this time, it was almost evening, and she really hoped Inoue was still in, because by now she needed directions back to Ichi's house. It was all very confusing. Hueco Mundo had many flaws, but at least there were plenty of open spaces.

She raised a fist to knock on the dark blue door, praying devoutly that it was the right one.

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In the minutes beforehand, within the apartment which was indeed the correct one, there was an almost reverent silence. Orihime was sweating slightly, eyes flickering from Grimmjow's face down to her hands.

"Any three's?

"Nope. Go fish."

"Oh."

"This game sucks with only two people, Orihime."

"Wanna play shouji, then?"

"No."

"Chinese Checkers?"

"No."

"Twister?"

"No – wait, what the hell?"

"Um…never mind. Snap?"

Grimmjow groaned, running his hands over his face. Being confined to the house for most of the time was another thing that sucked - to use an extremely mild term. He was starting to think that just informing Kurosaki that he was there and putting up with the subsequent whining and paranoia would be preferable. Worse, it had been months, with only _one_ proper fight in all that time.

Grimmjow did not believe himself to be cut out for a peaceful existance.

He still didn't understand why this was taking so long. They were down to three 'healings' a week, because any more exhausted the chick, try as she might - and would - to hide it. That concession drew a thin line between compassion and practicality; he put it down entirely to the latter.

And while he wasn't exactly keen to leave – the shelter was convenient, the company…pleasant enough, and the food was always interesting – and risky - he did regret that in his quest for freedom he appeared to have ended up deadlocking himself.

Ulquiorra would be, well, not laughing his ass off, certainly, but at least pulling that painfully condescending face which said _you are a disgrace to the legions of evil everywhere_. Screw him.

And then there was Haibel, and her ominous looming – which was, as far as he could see, the only promise of an interesting future he currently had.

_Knockknock. _

Or then again, perhaps not.

Previously he had noticed that no-one besides that Tatsuki girl ever really visited Inoue. He'd thought it odd, that a group that would track into one incarnation of hell to get to her wouldn't talk a trip down the road, just to talk. To go out. Do whatever human teenagers did. A change had perhaps taken hold of the wind, 'coz that was definitely Neliel's reiatsu outside.

He rose to go, sweeping the cards away under the couch with one foot, lifting a finger to his lips. Orihime nodded. He slunk into her room and locked the door behind him, all surreptitious.

"Orihime!"

"Nel!"

Hugs all round. Cut of the same cloth, those two. There was some then background gossip to ignore while he set about staring out the window, wondering if there were levels of bordom and frustration.

This was still better than it had been, though. He had no idea what precisely it was made the difference, as with Soul Society or Aizen, either way he was chained.

It was this distraction that was his undoing, mixed with ever present anger. His reiatsu spiked very slightly.

"Orihime…" Nel's voice had gone abruptly cold, and Grimmjow straightened, frowning. Uh oh. He squished his spirit lower, just in case.

Footsteps came closer, and then someone rapped the door sharply.

"Um…Nel?" Orihime sounded totally innocent; Grimmjow couldn't quite suppress a grin. That chick had got _gifted _at subterfuge, and he was pretty sure he was the only one who knew it.

"Come out." Nel was evidently not fooled, neither did she sound entertained. "Now."

He unlocked the door as a courtesy to Orihime, who'd already had to have a lock fixed on his account, and stepped away, contrary to the core.

"It's open," he told her curtly. "You come _in_."

A flood of light flowed through into the room, partially blocked by Nel's solid frame; she compromising by standing in the doorway and glaring as though she expected her opinion to have an effect.

"Something wrong?" he asked snidely, smirking. "Nice hat, by the way."

"Grimmjow." The curt tone was an improvement on her child form's wailing, exceedingly noisy terror, but grated on his nerves nonetheless. "What are you doing here?"

"Nothing much," he replied, opting for total and unhelpful honesty. Her lip curled and she turned to the Very Worried Orihime hovering behind her trying not to look guilty, as a much easier target.

"Did you know he was here?" Nel asked gently. The chick nodded. "Do you know what he's here for?" Another nod. Nel reached out and took the girl's hands, misinterpreting her embarrassment and confusion as actual distress. "Did he ask you to do anything…weird?"

Orihime cocked her head, trying to calculate whether using fairies to restore a dead guy's memory was _weird_, comparatively. Grimmjow snarled, angered by both circumstance and Neliel's interference. She may have been prone to acting the social worker, but he'd never thought her lacking so much sense – why the hell would he try anything like _that _with Orihime? She was protected, she was annoying and she was seventeen – and in any case, the implication that he'd need to rape or threaten someone into it was insulting.

"Um…well, sort of," said Orihime fairly, clueless. Nel's grip on her hands tightened, Grimmjow covered his eyes and Orihime blinked, confusion mounting. Then it clicked. It was almost audible. She drew in a swift breath.

"Oh no, not _that_," she exclaimed, indignant in his defence. "Grimmjow-san wouldn't – anyway," she added innocently, looking up at him. "Didn't you say you weren't interested in sex?"

Grimmjow spluttered, unbelieving, as Nel's expression moulded into one long, quizzical question. He swallowed.

"I...I…"

But for once in his long and often horrible existence, the Sexta Espada was speechless. He'd never been more tempted to wring the girl's neck. Not particularly comforting was the reflection that one of the reasons he tolerated his present company with such unusual equanimity was her tendency to make these kind of speeches - about other people. Always about other people.

Fortunately, at this point she rescued him, her brain catching up to the severity of the blow she'd struck at his composure.

"Oh no, sorry," she amended, blushing, "That was Noitora we were talking about. It just…er, came up, Nel."

Not the most elegant retrieval ever conducted, but it had the benefit of discomforting Neliel, since he was pretty sure she was – connected – to the fifth in one way or another.

"What _are _you here for, then?" she asked grudgingly, chasing the conversation back onto it's original lines. Grimmjow decided that cutting straight to the point was the best way to avoid any more damage to his ego. It was much more bruised and battered than he remembered it being, before any of this had begun.

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"It actually isn't that bad an idea," said Nel thoughtfully, almost wistfully. "If Orihime's alright with it."

"I am," the girl said gravely. She looked convincing and Nel seemed to believe her. Grimmjow felt something shift in the feeling that lurked constantly around his midsection, where the sign of his hollowhood was on display; a chill that had lingered there for as long as he could remember lessened briefly.

Must be coming down with something.

"Does it work?" Nel asked, ever practical.

"Kinda," he replied. "A little more each time."

He saw the avarice jump in her eyes and restrained a growl.

"Don't even think about it." It came out a snap, making Inoue jump. "If she has to do two of us it'll take twice as long, and I've been waiting long enough."

"Don't worry." The greed was replaced by a sparkle of amusement. "_I _can be patient. Possessive, aren't you?"

He came to understand, abruptly and unpleasantly, that it was true. For all that they seemed to have run out of things to do, he resented interruptions on his time with Orihime unless they were of his own making. Just another part of his nature, he supposed. If I need it, then it's mine, wholely and without exception.

Enough introspection for one day. He settled for glowering at her, varying his act with the addition of a slight sneer.

Meanwhile, oblivious Orihime had been struck by inspiration. She lit up from the inside when she thought she'd had a good idea, and she was glowing now. He waited, not without trepidation, and so missed the shrewd, curious look Nel threw first at him, then at Orihime.

"Hey, Nel," said the girl in question, beaming with the force of a thousand suns, "Do you know how to play Go Fish?"

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_Bubbles burst, red and gold sparks drifting and drowning in his brain. His limbs wouldn't move and his lungs screamed fury, but he focused instead on the one thing he was currently capable of managing; not breathing in. The surface seemed leagues away, shimmering and stained with red and white, but darkening. There was a weight on his chest beyond the effort of holding his breath, but his eyes wouldn't focus on the darkness blanketing him. _

_He strained _– were his arms really so slim? – _to swim, to push away whatever it was pinning him, but his ineffectual struggles remained ineffectual until a second dark shape shattered the brightness of the surface and shot towards him. _

_His lungs were seriously hurting now. His doom or his rescuer – _what kind of warrior needed rescuing? -_whichever it was,_ _would have to hurry up, else he'd have exploded from the strain of holding out for their arrival._

_And now his entire vision was fogging out, but it didn't matter because now the weight was lifting, and now something grabbed his shoulders and hauled him in the direction the bubbles were floating, and now, finally, there was air. He gulped it down, and down, listening to the gruff voice somewhere next to him – _It seemed familiar, comfortingly so, but for him the familiar had _never _been comforting – _and managed to loop an arm over broad shoulders_ _._

"_I got you, lad. Relax, relax. You with us?" _

_And for a few more seconds, he was._

After the seconds, and the waking up wet with sweat, not sea water, a new thought attacked viciously, as vicious in it's intrusion as he had always believed that he himself was.

Why wasn't he remembering properly, in flows, in streams, in oceans of knowledge?

The obvious answer came easily, but it hurt him, in places not used to being hurt - because he didn't want to. He didn't want to change, to grow into anything that he wasn't already, didn't want to discover that he was wrong, or right, or neither, or nothing, and he didn't want to leave.

He was afraid. Afraid, hah. It came from being hollow.

It wasn't enough anymore.

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AN: You have no idea how much this chapter resented being written. Still, it's here now. - wince - It's all this plot getting in the way. Yes. That'll be it.

Poor Noitora. XD. Always wondered if Kubo made him a woman hater on purpose because of the connotations attached to praying mantis mating habits. Anyway, I've wanted to write the Arrancar as - not sexless, precisely, but not preoccupied with sex - ever since I discovered the large body of fics covering the opposite angle, and I've wanted to make fun of Noitora in that context since i discovered all those Ulquihime/Grimmhime fics that cast him as a rapist, which he'd no doubt prefer to what I've done to him. Just to be different.

Early warning, the next chapter will be much shorter, and in a different style, and almost entirely plotless. It's being much more fun to write than this one was, however.


	8. Tale 7

Disclaimer: Ahhahaha...no.

AN: Told you it was short. The numbers are in order and interconnected, it's like a cross between twenty truths and my normal narrative style. It was fun to write, if ultimately pointless.

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Tale 7: A day of moonlight

Home's face: how it ages when you're away

Spring blooms and you find the love that's true

But you don't know what now to do

Cause the chase is all you know

And she stopped running months ago

And all you see

Is where else you could be

When you're at home

Out on the street

Are so many possibilities

To not be alone

"Your Heart is an empty room" - DCFC

**1** He woke a second time the next morning in a dark mood, deep rooted. She fried eggs and chattered from the kitchen, and his monosyllabic responses thawed and melted until they flowed smoothly, as the memories that wouldn't come would not.

**2 **Nel had given her word of honour to distract Ichigo and Rukia for that day, so they risked the wrath of fate and wandered over the town. He professed continued boredom, but at least it was a change of scenery.

**3** Orihime would have liked to anticipate a beautiful, clear sky as she stepped out her door, but the past had lured away much of her hopeless optimism to resurface in more childish hearts, and she was pleased with the cool pearl grey that met her instead. Grimmjow grunted irritably and forecast a rain which never came.

**4 **He shouldn't have said it was uninteresting – although he did regardless- barraged as he was with appeals to senses that had been as caged as their master; the sound of birds chirruping with sickening joy, the sun dazzling through the clouds like it had something to prove, in a way that might have been beautiful.

**5** There were strong scents too, assaulting them both. He, with his keener senses, suffered more. Wood smoke: haunting, old BBQ: unfamiliar, tarmac: ugly, and whatever type of flowers those were: nauseating. He leaned away, repulsed by the blooms with far too much to say for themselves, and encountered her instead. She smelled sweet, too, modestly spicy, and soft, and the scent skipped straight over his sinuses to impact on his brain.

He dismissed it, along with everything else, and breathed through his mouth.

**6 **They talked, not quite shoes and ships and sealing wax, but vigorously and obscurely enough for her to accumulate several odd looks for chattering animatedly away to herself. She never noticed a thing.

**7** Something else that neither of them noticed was the amazed Matsumoto standing frozen at the counter of a small shop, watching them progress by with stunned incredulity while those in the queue behind her grumbled and moaned and then turned to see what she was goggling at. All they saw was a girl with a bright head of hair staring up and to her left, and laughing.

"Excuse me, miss!" The shop attendant waved her purchases in her face, defiant at this apparent intrusion of insanity into his quiet little district. "Do you want a bag with that?"

"No, no," Matsumoto said dazedly. "Global warming, remember? We've got to save the world."

**8 **Up above the rooftops, as yet undetected, Tousen watched his old comrade/enemy stride away below with narrow suspicion.

He genuinely believed his objective was the same as Matsumoto's.

**9 **As they talked, Orihime picked pieces of conversation out and added them to her growing collection of information on exactly how Hueco Mundo worked. Maybe she was trying to understand how the enemy worked. Maybe she was trying to understand _him_. He didn't like to tell her that Hueco Mundo_ hadn't _worked; instead it had fallen like a landslide down whichever random route it was going to go, and those who didn't come out on top ended up underground.

**10 **They were neither neat nor methodical in their route, working instead on prolonging the journey for as long as possible.

**11** At one point, when the clouds cleared a little, she pointed upwards. The quarter moon was clear, a ghostly intruder on the morning, set in sky blue. She was enchanted: to her it was yet another pretty picture in the thousands that made up the step by step guide to life.

He'd seen the moon in too many settings to be enthused by it, even if he'd been inclined that way, but he did think, privately, that it looked best when framed by daylight.

**12 **"I'm hungry," she declared finally, attempting to drag him off in a new direction. It was like trying to move a mountain, but Orihime was the faithful kind. Bloody minded persistence also helped, of course.

**13** They worked out a compromise, in the end. He would definitely not let her hold his hand, but if _he_ gripped _her_ wrist in a characteristically controlling gesture, she could still tow him places.

Orihime wasn't one to quibble over technicalities.

**14 **Having been carted off to some gloriously unhealthy restaurant, he avenged himself on her by frequently stealing her chips. Never had hands been slapped more often in vain.

**15 **Some random guy approached them midway through Orihime gulping down a burger and started trying to talk to her about a sewing club.

Maybe that was where she'd met the Ishida kid, with his carefully subtle attention to her that flew right over the head of her _woman's intuition_.

Grimmjow might have then found in himself the capacity for sympathy, but…sewing?

**16 **Marginally more disturbing than personal revelations was the growing conviction that if this guy kept talking at her, she was gonna choke on that burger trying to reply. Inoue had a tendency to take too large bites out of life.

**17 **Finally, the boy gave them an escape.

"Are you waiting for someone, Inoue-san?" he asked. Orihime froze, trapped between truthfulness and another failed attempt to swallow. Grimmjow took action, reaching across the table, seizing her chin and bobbing it up and down for her. The boy grinned knowledgeably.

"I'll leave you to it, then, shall I?"

Grimmjow nodded Orihime's head for her again, pleasantly unrestrained by concepts of politeness. She made the swallow just in time to call goodbye.

**18 **Orihime dragged her unruly friend a few more places, blurring together the afternoon. The moon watched them as they trailed up her front path once again, and waited until they'd regained shelter before shattering and falling with the sky.

**19 **"I told you it would rain."

"That isn't rain, Grimmjow-san. That's snow!"

**20 **"Snow?"

"That's right. Haven't you ever met snow before?"

"_Met _it?"

"Uh-huh. Each snowflake is different, like people are different. Come look!"

She dragged him back out by force of personality, holding her palms up to the frosty blue sky.

"Oh, this one is really pretty…This one has a gentle spirit…this one likes to play…this one…this one…"

And on went the snowflake inventory, as they rested and ran together in her hands.

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AN: Thank you for the reviews. Would you believe I actually like Noitora?

Talking of reviews, the number for each chapter seems to be falling a bit. It's a bit sad to think that barely anyone is reading this, being as it is probably my largest fic yet, and I love it like the extremely unruly child that it is. Ah well.

I've almost finished writing the rest, so updates should come reasonably fast.


	9. Tale 8

Disclaimer: Whatever.

AN: Sorry for the delay, I made last chapter's claim to speedy updates having forgotten that I was about to plow right into exam season. XD

Also, as I forgot to answer this last time, in the chapter before last Nel was adult all the time, mentions of her as a child were comments on the past.

**Bold **is the past, _italics_ is either thought or emphasis.

Enjoy.

Tale 8: Sideways in time

Don't taint this ground  
with the colour of the past,  
Are the sounds in bloom with you?  
'Cause you seem like an orchard of mines  
Just take one step at a time

And you seem to break like time,  
So fragile on the inside,  
you climb these grapevines  
Would you look now  
unto this pit of me on the ground  
And you wander through these  
to climb these grapevines...

"Orchard of mines," – Globus

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"**Feel that?" Ainsly nudged him vigorously under the ribs, the grin that constantly hung around his grizzled features firmly in place. Grimmjow spared a hand to swat at him.**

"**Yeah, and see it too, I'm not blind. Run off, now."**

**Ainsly beamed up into the heart of the sky, his face littered with pearly cloud detritus. Grimmjow grunted.**

"**Well, we know we're in English waters now," he said, turning back to the tiller. "Bring out the tea, why don't you?" **

"**Nah," said Ainsly. "Typical English is more drizzle. Snow's always a bit special." **

She sat in the soft pile of white, concentrating so hard on the ball curving between her fingers that everything else appeared to fade, even the tall man looming bemusedly behind her, brushing snow off the lip of his mask.

Grimmjow, having met snow, wasn't sure why anyone would want to stay out in it. He shivered pointedly when she recalled his existence and shot him a monitoring glance but she only flopped back laughing, in a manner most uncompassionate.

She compounded the insult by hurling her snowball at him, obscenely cheerfully. It splattered over his bare chest. He gazed at her with a mixture of anger and concern, the two emotions clearly fighting for space on his face.

"Don't be such a baby," she giggled. "I wonder if I can get one through your hole?"

She made a spirited attempt before he regained the presence of mind to grab her wrists. Cold spluttered across his forearms as her hands opened.

"What." He pushed his face closer to hers, trying to communicate his total incomprehension to those merry eyes, the parted, laughing lips. "Are you doing?"

"Playing," she said simply, looking back at him without the faintest hint of fear. He saw his own face reflected in her eyes instead, and released her, backing away.

"What's that?" he muttered, eyes moving from her to the snow drift, and then lifting back to her, as though under compulsion.

"This!"

Splat.

Grimmjow spluttered. Orihime giggled, watching him. They stared at each other as the seconds flew by, generating friction.

Both bent over in unison, scooping frantically, but Grimmjow was quicker, tossing off the perfect shot, crowning her with white. Orihime let out a restrained shriek and ran away from him, gathering wet handfuls as she went.

"Hey, stay in the yard – chick's not listening to a word…Orihime, wait!"

She scurried off, heedless of hiding, still pausing every now and then to add to her ammunition. He shook his head.

"Come on!" She waved.

That was the woman's problem, this total belief in people. Grimmjow doubted Nel was still preoccupying either Kurosaki or Kuchiki now, promise or no promise.

"_Come on_!" she hopped up and down.

Ah well.

He dashed after her, grinning wildly.

Time to kick ass, as usual.

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**Time descended on them quickly, too quickly, the normal routine of enemy encounters seeming somehow to slip between his mental fingers as soon as the enemy vessel was sighted. **

**He wasn't worried. Grimmjow didn't worry about things, as a rule. He looked around instead, checking, checking. They always had to be ready. **

**Snow turned to mush underfoot as the sailors bustled, as contact came ever nearer. He caught Ainsly's eye, and shrugged slightly. **

**With time came the wait. **

"Snow, Ichi!" Yuzu tugged at her brother's sleeve, presumably worried in case he'd recently been struck blind and deaf. "Snow!"

"I can see it, Yuzu," Ichigo said calmly. "I'm doing homework."

"Oh." The little girl shrank slightly, lip jutting out.

"You can still play in it!" Ichigo waved his hands. As a reluctant hero, he frequently found himself trying to avert tragedy. Apparently, tragedy had followed him home this time. Moisture beaded in the soft eyes of his gentle sister, and her hand fell away from his arm.

Karin tutted from the doorway, shaking her head.

"C'mon, Yuzu. Brother's obviously got no time for his family anymore. I'm sure dad will play with us."

As Isshin had already made three snow men, dragged a Santa Clause suit out of a back closet and donned it, and showered inoffensive neighbours with head sized snow balls, this was a fair bet. Ichigo sighed. Say what you liked, there was no defence against sisterly manipulation.

Besides, Rukia was already dancing around outside with his father. This had all the earmarks of a disaster waiting to happen.

Nel was also standing outside, but she seemed less satisfied, arguing with Santa and the Easter bunny, trying to block their progress out into the wider world.

"Can't we just keep it here?" she asked. "Like a private family thing? Oh, hello, Ichi," she added on seeing him, sounding even more despondent. "Thought you were doing homework."

He shrugged. "Almost finished. Where are we going?"

Isshin waved his arms around enthusiastically. "Everywhere, nowhere! I love snow!"

He darted past Nel's cautioning arm, dancing down the street with an enthusiasm that seemed almost obscene to Ichigo's critically teenage eyes.

The Kurosaki family plus one adopted daughter exchanged exasperated looks and trailed after him, leaving Nel standing aimlessly in the middle of the road.

"Oh dear," she muttered. "This will not end well, by the pricking in my thumbs."

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**The roar of battle blotted out the roar of the waters, tossing and turning and making this a very unstable playground indeed. Grimmjow pulled his feet back under him, kicking the body of his last attacker out of his way.**

**He rose in time to catch Ainsly's eye one last time, to see the sword erupt from his first mate's chest, to realise that the bodies littering the deck were mostly the ones with the familiar faces, with the names most frequently mouthed. **

**He moved forward to add another of the unrecognised to the score, over the head of the old man still looking at him with foggy, blank eyes, as though **_**he **_**were faceless.**

**And he wanted to say something, to justify how winded he felt, to tell them that they had **_**cheated**_**, and would die for it, but that would be weak and pathetic. He was too winded to yell a battle cry, hissed one instead, and declared personal war despite the sinking feeling that had nothing to do with how secure the ship was. **

"I reject!"

White splattered against her golden shields.

"Hey, that's cheating!"

She stuck her tongue out – and blinked as he vanished, power flaring. A cold hand grasped the back of her shirt.

Orihime inhaled, anticipating the future with utmost horror.

"Grimmjow, no! AHH!"

The wet coldness that had been slowly stiffening her hands now swarmed damply down her back. She huffed with indignation while he snickered.

"Am I going to pay for that, huh, chick? C'mon!"

She obeyed readily, volleying off missiles with all the motivation of declared war.

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Ichigo froze midway through his family's romp, Rukia jerking to a halt a split second later.

"Did you feel that?" he asked.

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"**Nothing personal," said the man in the enemy uniform, grinning with a cheer that Grimmjow, for once, found himself unable to match. **

"**I don't give a damn what your target was," Grimmjow said, and there it was after all, the bravado, the beginnings of a feral smile taking root at his mouth. "You're mine. Anythin' else you feel you have to do will have to wait until I've killed you, you bastard." **

Orihime tried hard to restrain herself, but her laughter shaken body refused to hold in the squeaks that built in her throat every time she moved, shifting around the snow inside her clothing. Her merciless companion had successful diverted her attempt to push him into a mini snow drift by tripping her and sending her headlong into her own trap, and she was torn between begging for help or throwing the rapidly melting slush at his head. He stood over her, smirking, mouth opening for some mockery or challenge –

"Grimmjow!"

Inoue saw shock flicker across Grimmjow's face before the Kurosaki-kun turned tempest struck, and then the two of them were shooting away from her, blade to blade. They left tracks, harsher, wider, than the footprints that had last marked the ground.

Rukia, in full Shinigami gear, crouched at her side. Concern had widened her large eyes to immensity. Orihime was reminded of Nel's reaction, and wondered how often she'd have to do this.

"Are you alright?" Her friend asked urgently, reaching for her hand. She moved it away, feeling suddenly, unaccountably angry at conclusion leapfrogging friends.

"I'm fine. Kurosaki-kun, stop!"

Ichigo was too buried in his own protective rage to heed her. Grimmjow's eyes flickered to hers, irritation and enjoyment counterbalancing each other within. He shot her a grin, separate from the expressions of blood lust reserved for Ichigo, a challenge and a mockery to replace whatever he'd been about to say.

_So what are you gonna do about it, then?_ It asked her.

She shouted Ichigo's name again, some of the annoyance whirring in her soul contained in the three syllables, startling Rukia. He didn't even looked up from the whirlwind his sword on the Espada's had become, although to be fair, that might have been because Grimmjow was something of a distraction even when he wasn't trying to kill you. Said distraction didn't look up either, not this time, but she was sure she saw his smile widen.

Her eyes stung, dismayed by this noisy, awkward, angry rejoining of the two halves of her life, the crash course they were headed on.

Not yet defeated, she bent, pushing her fingers into the endless arsenal gathering itself around her.

She shaped two fresh snowball with undue care, a curious, excited fluttering warming her numbed hands and her cheeks. She wasn't used to commandeering the spotlight, but here it came. Maybe they'd be impressed. Maybe they'd be angry.

Time for Inoue Orihime to make her Grand Last Stand, with snowballs.

She waited until the two slowed, grinding strength against strength, and threw, with all the force she had in her.

Ichigo's head jerked forward, orange dulled by white, eyes wide in amazement.

"I said stop," she called, stalking towards them. Grimmjow was amazed too, more at the vivid indignation on her face than her actions; he couldn't recall at time that he'd felt better disposed towards her. Even if she had interrupted.

It helped that, although her aim was good when it came to Kurosaki, she'd missed him completely.

"You tell him, kid," he murmured.

Ichigo continued to look blank, understandably. She was inexplicable; he waited for the explanation that blazed from every indignant angle of her face.

"He wasn't doing anything," she said more softly, close enough to look imploringly into her friend's eyes. "He didn't hurt me."

Ichigo turned to look at the offender, taking in the total lack of repentance on his face, belied by the re-sheathed sword. Grimmjow crossed his arms.

"I'm here on business, Kurosaki," he condescended to explain, blazing with his full spectrum of indifference. "Nothing to do with you."

Ichigo dropped an arm around Inoue's shoulders, somehow both tender and belligerent, and the Sexta Espada felt his hackles rise unwillingly. The girl leaned into Ichigo's arm, shivering at the cold she'd been reintroduced to when falling off cloud nine. The little Shinigami female hovered behind them too, concerned and snow flecked and forgotten.

Grimmjow was too engaged in watching Inoue blush to pay any attention to Kurosaki's queries as to the precise nature of that 'business', the look on his face getting steadily more ugly, causing Ichigo to draw his friend closer, and then shunt her behind him entirely, blocking her from the blistering glare.

"…doing?"

Grimmjow started, coming back to icy reality as soon as Orihime disappeared from view. Ichigo gave the strong impression that he wouldn't mind getting his sword back out and beating out an answer to the question he'd already repeated four times. His enemy blinked.

"What?" Grimmjow snapped.

"What are you doing here?" Ichigo said again, with exaggerated clarity, deleting all words with three or more syllables.

"I just told you," the Espada snapped. "None of your damn business, Shinigami!"

"It is my business when I find you terrorising Inoue," said Ichigo reasonable. Grimmjow thought back over the day.

-_I wonder if I can get one through your hole?- _

It seemed to him that _Orihime _was not the one being terrorised. She peeked around Kurosaki's elbow to look at him enquiringly. She was smiling slightly, knowingly, and he could only conclude that she agreed with him. He was definitely not, however, going to correct this point for Kurosaki, who was looking down at the girl leaning around him with some surprise.

"She looks alright to me," he said. "So how about you drop it?"

Ichigo raised an eyebrow. Orihime giggled nervously, rubbing the back of her head, having already shed the implacable skin that had had her facing her oftentimes rescuer down.

"It's fine," she said. "Really. Grimmjow's been here for months already-"

"Which you never noticed," Grimmjow interrupted.

"Shush. He hasn't hurt me in all that time, Kurosaki-kun. I'm doing him a favour, that's all."

_And that's all. _

"_Months?" _Ichigo asked, stricken. Grimmjow snickered.

"Some protector you are," he said scathingly. Ichigo's jaw clenched.

"Why?"

"He wants me to – mumft!"

Grimmjow's hand clamped over her mouth, imprisoning the flapping tongue within.

Truthfully, he wasn't sure why he didn't want Kurosaki to know. It was none of his business, was all. He had no reason to be hounding out Grimmjow's necessities, even – especially – when one of them happened to be her.

The crisscrossing bonds holding him here were only noticeable when some blundering intruder tripped over them, and he _hated _being bound.

It wouldn't be for much longer anyway.

"What did I tell you?" he asked, voice harsh, watching her struggle to free herself dispassionately. Ichigo launched into immediate action, like the hero he was. Orihime was dragged free from the villain holding her with all due haste, and blinked reproachfully up at him from Kurosaki's arms.

He met her eyes, still unwilling, still compelled. She was some kind of twisted magic. For that moment, so soon after their highest heights, he hated her. He had no idea why.

He sneered bitterly, just for emphasis.

Orihime didn't understand either, hadn't yet realised how precarious their position really was, and how easy it was to fall. She continued to stare, hurt, and only succeeded in infuriating him further. There was little left that he could be bothered to say with spectators watching in accusing interest, and so he wheeled on one heel.

"Tell them what you want," he said, and stalked off.

Ichigo stared at his back, totally mystified.

"What the hell was that?" he asked, and Orihime could only echo his sentiments.

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**He lunged, feeling his opponent out, and smiled wickedly at what he found.**

**He was the better fighter – faster, stronger, more determined. The other man smiled back, urbane and unconcerned. **

**A flurry of attacks and ripostes came, as the snow fell on and on against the deck, driven by the wind. He pulled back, weapon ruby tipped, and the enemy rubbed ruefully at one forearm. **

**A final strike, locking the blades together; Grimmjow attempted to roll his opponent's point out of the way and instead ripped his blade from his hand. Startled but unhesitating, he attacked.**

**The left hand that had been busy while the right hand was weakening came out of the man's jacket before Grimmjow reached him, pistol firmly ensconced in fingers. **

**The bullet struck him mid abdomen and passed right through in a line of agony, tossing his sword from his hand and tossing him backwards to the floor, like a particularly feeble rag doll. The thud as he landed rang through his body but never reached his ears, engaged as they were in listening to his own ragged, desperate breathing.**

"**You…scum," he managed to eject from unwilling lips. Blood followed more eagerly.**

"**Perhaps," The man stood over him, examining Grimmjow's sword. He was as critical and supercilious as some miniature god confident in his own expansion, cold as the snow fluttering aimlessly around. Grimmjow itched to claw that expression of his face, the dismissal, the certainty. **

**His murderer nodded slowly, and stuck it through his belt. "Just remember, my friend, **_**you**_** were defeated by scum like me." **

**He turned and faded out, back into the noise, replaced by the gathering darkness. Grimmjow snarled and snarled again, unwilling to lose.**

**Unwilling to die. **

**He met the death which came regardless with a faint expression of scorn. They considered it fitting, once the battle had ended and they slipped the bodies into the sea, quiet and solemn as an after-note for a tragedy. **

_She's a convenience. A freaking side benefit. She's a nothing. _

He strode onwards, his fists clenched so that the knuckles stood out whitely. He was aware that his anger gave the lie to his thoughts, and it made him far, far more angry than ever.

Remembering her innocent expression, cocooned in Kurosaki's fierce protection, he sped up, trying for distance.

It had been borne upon him, suddenly and unexpectedly, that she would _never _be his.

The _unexpected _part of this was the fact that he wanted it otherwise. Wanted it badly, ice and fire want flowing through him in the place of blood.

It was ridiculous.

_She is nothing. _

Whimsy whispered that that was probably the reason. Leave it to a hollow to be fascinated with a nothing.

He stomped whimsy flat.

Besides, she wasn't, and he knew it.

He knew enough to know when to let go, and leave. To run away, in fact. He'd never done that before.

_Looks like I'm learning all kinds of things from you, 'Hime – chan, _he thought bitterly.

"Grimmjow!"

He whirled. And there she stood, just out of reach, panting and pink from running to catch up. Her breath misted in the cold, filling the gap between them. He stepped back firmly.

"Whatd'ya want?" he asked, as off hand as possible. She blinked across at him.

Then she reached out a hand, smiling out all the inner peace he'd always found so strange in her.

"Come back with me," she said.

He backed up again. "What?"

"Please," she added, serene as a girl not facing down a severely pissed off Arrancar.

He –

_Bridged the gap himself, hand closing for the last time on her throat, shutting off the confusion and the presumption, crushing this little girl who thought she could command the Sexta Espada, Grimmjow Jaggerjack. This child, who thought she could save him. This woman, who almost had him believing her. He watched the stars die out of her eyes, watched red infect the white that had always haunted him._

- just stood there, watching her suspiciously.

"I don't know what you mean," he said finally.

"You're leaving," she said, without doubt. He shrugged slightly. It was true.

"Please," she looked down finally. "I know I haven't been doing what you want properly. I promise I'll do better. You won't have to wait much longer. Please, don't go."

The snow fell down, building that bridge between them, piece by piece. He looked away.

"Why - "

Reiatsu crashed down on both their heads, cutting him off mid sentence and pushing her to her knees.

And Tousen's blade moved through him with all the ease of a knife through water.

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AN: Oh noes!

Thank's for all the reviews. I should whine more often, obviously.


	10. Tale 9

Disclaimer:Don't own, 'kay?

AN: Ach, I don't like how this came out at all, but it has been meddled with enough, I guess. Have fun.

Tale 9: The last lynchpin of paradise

It's not a silly little moment  
It's not the storm before the calm  
This is the deep and dyin' breath of  
This love we've been workin' on

Can't seem to hold you like I want to  
So I can feel you in my arms  
Nobody's gonna come and save you  
We pulled too many false alarms

We're goin' down  
And you can see it too  
We're goin' down  
And you know that we're doomed  
My dear  
We're slow dancing in a burnin' room

"Slow dancing in a burning room" – John Mayer

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**The final report of 6****th**** Division 5****th**** seat on the Christmas epilogue.**

**(Before starting, I would like to note that this is the 5****th**** report done on the subject, and is cobbled together with facts from the previous four, all of which were done by people who were actually there. It is probable, therefore, that the memo I received instructing me to write this overspill of bureaucracy was a mistake. I shall be expecting a full apology in the unlikely event that anyone important actually reads this.) **

_The clean up case for the winter war ended just shy of two years after the closing of the original, and did so with not so much of a bang as a whimper. Nonetheless, it had a number of significant repercussions, including the following: the capture of traitor and war criminal Tousen Kaname, the capture of the Espada Haibel, the capture of several miscellaneous Arrancar, and the death of the Sexta Espada Grimmjow. _

_That last bit is rather complicated, actually… _

Tousen considered himself quite longsighted - physical impediments notwithstanding - so he was well able to overlook his latest victim and focus wholly on his objective, even though one was considerably louder than the other. Her soul flickered in horror as blood slid hotly down over his fingers, and, predictably enough, he heard her gasp as her companion swore.

The sword Tousen claimed for justice had shot through Grimmjow's shoulder, diverted from his vital points by the instant, instinctive recognition of danger that had thus far protected the Sexta Espada's life – and most of his limbs. Tousen put it down to animal intuition.

Orihime threw up a shield between them almost as quickly, and Tousen put _that_ down to experience. A shame that such an innocent was so well acquainted with danger, but there was little he could do for her, for until justice was established life could not be fair. He examined the tip of his sword with resignation, sensing the steady drip.

"A pity. I had hoped to finish this quickly."

He turned to Orihime, an appeal between rational creatures set to the music of Grimmjow's furious cursing.

"Don't you wish to end this peacefully, Inoue Orihime?"

Her returning anger answered him in curious union with Grimmjow's words: "You _scum._" He could feel it on his skin, burning brightly, and for several moments, he was startled.

He rebooted quickly, switching to sending the injured but vocal Espada a glance that was intended, optimistically, to be quelling.

Grimmjow's lip curled.

"Waddya want her for anyway, Tousen?" he asked. "Gonna reject away how pathetic you are?"

_What it was that Tousen wanted – the complete reversal of reality to before Aizen's defeat and demise, naturally. He didn't cope with change very well. _

_Maybe he was stupid, maybe he was mad, maybe he was desperate. This was the final conclusion of months of waiting and scheming, this, a back alley threat at swordpoint which at first seemed more like a plea, for all the firepower behind it. _

_But it wasn't a bad plan. _

"Be silent," Tousen said sternly. "This would not have involved you, if you had taken my advice."

"Right, yeah. Or if Haibel had killed me. Why didn't you get her to kill me, Tousen? Thought I was beneath the consideration of your bullshit morals."

While talking, the heartless monster had edged himself around, so that he was between Tousen and Orihime. "Hey, is that it? You gonna reject Aizen back to life? Send us all back to hell, like we deserve?"

Tousen closed his eyes. "Our path has been turned, Grimmjow. Inoue Orihime has the capacity to restore it. If she can be persuaded - "

Grimmjow almost collapsed laughing, and Tousen fought off a twitch. Nothing got under his skin quite like people like this. "If she can be persuaded? You aren't just blind, you're retarded!"

"As ever," Tousen said acidly. "Your remarks are nothing but the yapping of a collared dog, Grimmjow."

Inoue, preoccupied as she was, still had room to think that this was a remarkably unsuitable metaphor to use. Very wisely, she kept her mouth shut. Grimmjow caught her eye.

"Whatever, man," he said finally, dismissively. "All her friends are just around the corner, anyway. You're wasting your time."

"Not at all," Tousen said, and, going for the theatrical gesture, sonido'd behind them. He reached inside his shirt, producing a large loop of metal with a slight flourish, and dropped it delicately over Orihime's head.

For just an instant, for that everpresent moment that it takes to _think_, both Grimmjow and Inoue did nothing. They awaited future developments in the hopes that everything would make sense in hindsight. And then both their brains kick-started, and Grimmjow reached for the metal circle at the same time as her hands flew to her throat.

Several more things happened at once, the most dramatic being Haibel kicking Grimmjow in the stomach.

He landed hard on his back, winded and angry and pinned under her weight for the second time in not so very long, but only started struggling when he heard Orihime scream. Haibel, not wasting her breath, palmed a cero and held it menacingly before his eyes, the immediate future quite clearly demonstrated. He snarled.

Orihime, meanwhile, was tugging at the band that had sealed tightly around her neck. When that did nothing, she looked enquiringly at Tousen who elaborated, quite calm.

"That is a variant on the device Ulquiorra gave you in order to let you visit your friends unseen. Do you understand? My whole army is wearing them, making us virtually undetectable to the Shinigami, and we could kill every single one of your powerless friends without Soul Society being any the wiser."

She flinched. Everything had been going...so well, for so long. Why this again? Why this now?

"What do you want me to do?" she whispered.

Tousen smiled.

_Not a bad plan at all._

"As Grimmjow said," he replied. "I want you to reverse time and resurrect Aizen-sama."

"And then what?" she asked, lifting her eyes.

He turned away slightly. "We will…rectify our mistakes."

-But you don't know what your mistakes were - she thought. -You weren't there when Aizen died. -

She tested the waters.

"You mean, you'll kill Kurosaki-kun before he's strong enough to take on Aizen. And then you'll destroy Kakakura town anyway."

From the ground, Grimmjow snorted. "Great options."

Tousen shrugged. "I do not know how Kurosaki defeated Aizen. It must have been a fluke, or a trick, but we will take precautions. And the deaths of your friends would still be less immediate than they are now, Inoue Orihime."

_It was similar to the play which had brought Inoue to Hueco Mundo in the first place._

_But she was older, wiser, and more confident, and she had Grimmjow at her side, pouring on derision. Perhaps everything seemed a lot less inevitable. Perhaps there was something else. _

Her nose wrinkled. "Technically they'd have had a year's less time, actually. No. No way."

Haibel looked over at them. "Probably she will change her mind once you have broken her arms, Tousen."

Grimmjow seized his chance as soon as it came, grinning at the memory of their first fight and the danger of distractions. Only two years, but it seemed that all of them were getting careless. He grabbed her wrist, yanking it hard out to the side. The cero she shot automatically snapped snow and broken concrete over the pair of them, fortunately no longer close enough to singe his eyebrows. The cero _he _shot rose past her into the sky, bright and burning and extremely visible to people like, for instance, Ichigo.

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Ichigo's head shot up.

"Grimmjow!"

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Not so far from him, the little group of backup Shinigami also snapped to attention.

They would have all started stampeding in the direction of the signal cero had the singsong voice of Urahara, that most enterprising of merchant scientists, not brought them up short.

"Are you absolutely _sure _you want to do that?" he said, waving his fan cheerfully. "Without first making a purchase?"

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Haibel kicked Grimmjow again, this time in the jaw. Inoue winced for him and trembled for herself, but her resolve remained solid.

Tousen sighed.

"We will have to move, now." He said. "Please kill that one before he can cause any _more_ trouble."

"No," Orihime gasped. "I won't let you."

"You?" asked Tousen. "You have nothing to stop me with, Inoue Orihime."

She twisted her fingers together. She closed her eyes. She begged.

"Please, stop this."

And then came the ultimatum, hidden in her desperation:

"I won't do what you want me to do anyway."

_I will stop you._

"You will," said Tousen, slightly apologetic. "Eventually."

"No." The eyes came open again. "Because you should know, Tousen, that Kurosaki-kun didn't kill Aizen. Not alone."

Her mouth opened, moved almost silently to long ingrained rhythms. Tousen blinked, sightless.

"I helped," she whispered, and then louder. "I reject!"

The shield erupted up between Tousen and Inoue, Grimmjow and Haibel, and then closed around Tousen and his army, holding them in.

She breathed out slowly.

_The threat's other weakness, of course, was its most obvious strength – the strength, that is, of the Arrancar, and the essential difference between them and Tousen. _

Loud pounding of feet forewarned them of another development.

"Stop, Tousen!"

"…"

Even Grimmjow was speechless. The small ensemble of Shinigami had arrived to the rescue slightly late and slightly ruffled, and the majority of them looked several degrees more ticked off than usual. Matsumoto, on the other hand, appeared to be having the time of her life.

They were all wearing, in addition to traditional Death God garb, neon pink sunglasses.

Tousen looked gratifyingly appalled at their coming anyway.

"How…How can you see us?" he asked. "Syazel designed these devices to make us invisible."

Ichigo coughed deprecatingly. "Urahara." The scientist had had a field day in the Espada researcher's lab.

Tousen, already broken, turned to Haibel desperately.

_The Arrancar weren't interested in lost causes. _

She looked at him impassively, then slowly shook her head.

"We cannot stand against Soul Society again, Tousen. That was not the agreement."

"Running from a fight, Haibel?" Grimmjow taunted.

"I do not see you facing them down either, Sexta," she returned coolly.

"I've got better things to do with my time," Grimmjow smirked.

_After that, the whole situation hit the fan, and fell to bits. Poor Tousen. He'd banked his entire plot on Inoue Orihime being compliant – and not too bright. He wasn't a very good judge of character._

_If Ichimaru Gin had been involved, now, things might have gone very differently indeed. But speculation isn't necessary in reports – even reports that no-one is ever going to read, so I'll skip to the next interesting bit. Grimmjow's death. _

_You might think, since the fighting was over, that everyone was out of danger. It's not like spontaneous combustion is all that common in people._

_This is why I said it gets complicated._

_Well, first, everyone bustled off arresting everyone else, leaving Inoue and Grimmjow to sit about and relax for about half an hour. Or so the plan went. _

Grimmjow looked down at Orihime, who retaliated by looking down at her shoes.

"We are definitely going to have a long talk about this," he muttered, but without force.

Inoue reached out and touched the bloody wound in his shoulder, tracing it gently.

"Let me heal you."

And just for the sake of his pride, he answered "do it," in the tone of an order, as though he didn't know she was asking purely for appearance, and would politely damn his opinion if for some reason he chose to wander around oozing blood. Another healing. How many would that be, after all this time?

He remembered the first time now, with a clarity which had only come recently; from the unbalanced feeling his missing arm had given him to the cold mask she'd worn, failing to conceal her fear and heartbreak. Maybe they'd both seemed a little softer in the golden light, but it hadn't been enough to really matter, then.

Past the fascination of the moment and the swelling of power renewed, he hadn't given a damn.

He hadn't given her anything.

He was absorbed enough in his thoughts and a silent contemplation of her face, the same but different from that time, for the change to pass at first unnoticed.

It crept up on him gradually, the tingling sensation that should have stayed firmly in the area of the wound as it sealed spreading outwards, warmth smoothing over his skin as though he was a lightning rod in a thunderstorm.

Orihime's brows were furrowed with concentration from the other side of the shield, she was oblivious to his – not discomfort, exactly, but something. Something unfamiliar, outside of his control, which he was totally certain he didn't like.

"Orihime," he said, not quite snapping. She was immediately all enquiry, hands still resting on the golden arch, eyebrows lifted slightly in question. Something new and alien to him pounded in his ears in response.

Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum.

Heat slid up to his cheeks, and if he'd known what it was to blush, that would be what he would compare it to.

"What are you doing?"

There was the faintest trace of panic in his voice, a mere echo of the raging ocean within him, but she reacted to it instantly.

Anger swallowed him next, anger in rebellion at the fear. She saw that too, reflected on his face.

Da-dum, Da-dum, da-dum.

"I'm…healing you. Is something wrong?"

His mask, having waited for an opportune moment, chose that instant to snap loudly, the bone buckling. Orihime's eyes went round with horror, her mouth dropping to a perfect O, and Grimmjow didn't feel much better.

"What…the hell?" He poked the crumpled shape gingerly. She dropped her barrier immediately.

"Grimmjow-san, your mask looks like it was in a motorway pile up! What happened?"

She reached up to join him in prodding his jaw but froze, her fingers only an inch away.

"Grimmjow…san?"

She was staring at him like he'd grown a second head, or his hair had turned pink, or something equally horrifying.

"What?" he snapped.

"I can see right through you," she said, in traumatised accents. This sounded more like something from one of the particularly crappy things her TV machine showed than anything relevant to current events, until he suddenly focused on his own hand and realised that however opaque his motives were, his body was distinctly transparent.

He swore, and wriggled his fingers.

"Did I…do that?" She was still horrified, but guilt was fighting for attention too.

This prevented his next move, which would otherwise have been to ask just what the hell she'd done.

That just left ad libbing, and Orihime was more at sea than ever when her companion suddenly threw back his head and laughed, long and hard.

"Look's like we went too far, chick," he said. She didn't understand. He explained.

"We spent all this time,"- _wasted it- _"Trying to reject away whatever it was that was stopping me remembering being human. Remember that?"

Nod, nod. He had her well trained.

"Yeah. Looks like what was stopping me…_was _me. I'm not human, Orihime, right?"

And now, finally, it dawned. Guilt bloomed across her features like sunrise.

"Don't look like that, moron. I told you to do it. You were just following orders. Don't go presuming to take responsibility for _anything_ I decide to do, got that, chick?"

His voice was still firm and reassuringly arrogant. She didn't pay any attention, which was just like her and incredibly annoying.

He turned his attention back to his vanishing arm, waving it in front of his vanishing face.

"Well, this blows," he muttered. She bit her lip and looked fragile, and he decided that however freaking annoying she was, he should probably give up on hating her. It just wasn't working, the attempt bludgeoned into submission by her indefatigable ... something. _Ness. _

Was indefatigableness a word?

So he didn't hate her, and even more surprisingly still, he didn't feel much of an inclination to blame her for this either.

He'd _known _she was a corrupting influence.

She was also freaking out, clinging to his jacket sleeve and crying, and all of this was terribly ironic, but he wasn't interested in any irony that wasn't him beating the crap out of someone who thought they were better than him. Couldn't he just skip the comforting bit and go straight to not existing? For Aizen's sake, he hadn't come here and started all this to end up trying to persuade some hopeless little girl not to weep for him.

Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.

He'd always figured he'd go out fighting, although he hadn't realised the opponent would be what passed for a better nature.

He lost. It left a sour, angry taste in his mouth that he nonetheless ignored, and he moved forward, pulling her hand away from his arm and catching her other wrist, bringing both up to shoulder height.

"Shut up crying," he commanded.

"Grimmjow-"

He bent swiftly, bringing his mouth down to hers. This was quite effective, because she stopped talking immediately, and he was able to satisfy his rebelling hollow instincts that, far from bordering on the repulsive concept of _nice_, this technique of silencing her and putting her worry away was downright wicked. He grinned against her lips, which were pleasantly responsive.

If he judged the situation correctly, this would be her first. And if Kurosaki ever got over being oblivious and took what was already rightfully his, Grimmjow intended that every kiss between the star struck would remind her of _him, _intended that his signature would stay imprinted on her every relationship, so she'd never totally belong to anyone else but him.

He intended to pollute her with him.

He pulled back.

She was breathless, lips looking slightly swollen, and he knew he'd succeeded by the way she rose on tip toe as he lifted his head. He'd never felt so pleasantly sinful.

"Don't you ever go forgetting my name, Hime-chan," he said, rubbing it in.

"Grimmjow…"

He snorted, then. "Yeah, that's a start."

"Grimmjow!"

But he was gone.

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There was a distant dull clatter of people running, about half an hour after that, and Ichigo and Hitsuguya and half a dozen other friendly faces came hurrying up to where she knelt on the scorched ground.

"Inoue? Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

She said nothing. Instead, she looked up at her concerned, orange haired saviour, and wanted to cry, but did not.

"Where's Grimmjow? Soul Society wants him for questioning too," said Hitsuguya, also concerned but ever practical.

She looked at her hands, clasped on her lap. "He's gone."

"Huh?" said Ichigo blankly. "Where'd he go?"

Matsumoto crouched beside her friend, a hand resting lightly on her shoulder. "Orihime? Where did he go?"

_So far, we haven't got an answer._

_And if we ever do, you can do your own damn report on it._

_Signing out, 5__th__ seat. _

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Ahhahahaha, so there you have it. The End. At least you got a kiss, right?

Hey, what are you doing with those pitchforks? Put those down!

Oh, an epilogue? Yeah, I guess I could do one of those. And, since I left you with teh Evil Cliffy of doom last chapter too, I'll let you in on a secret.

It's a happily ever after, guys. Well, as close as these two can come.

Anywho, Thank you for the cries of anguish for last chapter. Keep it up!

Special thanks to MadMoFunk, because her Grimmhime was one of the first two I ever read, and it's incredible to get a review from her. And all you guys, of course - I'm a review junkie, remember. Give, give!


	11. Epilogue

AN: I didn't make you wait too long, did I? Anyway, this, the epilogue, is the second longest chapter. Oops...

Disclaimer: I still don't own Bleach.

Epilogue: The reign of snow

_It's been so long, and tin cans and string for years  
is all that we've known, could it be you're really here?_

_'cause my eyes are open, and everything still moves in slow-motion,  
breathless and blue, and behind your eyes the sea  
oceans of light envelop me_

_but things can't be as they seem, I'm so far from home  
this must be another dream,_

_but my eyes are open_

"_Atlantic" – Thrice_

The sky revolved behind her.

Inoue tilted her chin against the grain of gravity, looking up as the clouds shuffled and resorted a stormy hand. Cold winds ruffled both hair and clothing; around the park mothers were huddling their wards into new layers or hustling them home. Inoue didn't budge.

She'd caught one or two odd looks, but she kept her head up and ignored them all, only listening to the pockets of silence that the wind brought as it rocked her. On her other side children came and went, swinging enthusiastically and leaving trails of laughter to wind around her heart. She didn't budge.

She slumped slightly instead.

_The persistent clinking noise was enough to rouse her, even from the fuzzy depths of Kurosaki-kun saturated dreams. _

_With the addition of her house-guest, getting up in the middle of the night to decode a previously unnoticed enigma of humanity was becoming quite a habit. _

_This time, it was the fridge. _

_She would never forget his perplexed look as he opened and shut the door- light, dark, light, dark. It was about that time she started being able to decode _him,_ telling the difference between annoyed bemused and annoyed homicidal with an expert eye. _

She rather thought she'd like to stay there forever, standing on a swing in an almost empty playground while it continued to not quite rain, certainly not snow, but then, she had responsibilities.

Afternoon came in swirling black and whites, all drab.

She closed her eyes and unwrapped her hands from the ropes; jumped.

It took several seconds – frozen, flying instants – for her feet to find the ground, and she counted each one carefully, rocking slightly with the impact of landing. She then walked, perusing the day as one rifles through the pages of an old magazine, checking for anything new or colourful. Trees, grass, path, the same old park.

Mizuiru was throwing a party tomorrow evening, all enthusiasm and probably some illegal alcohol; Inoue still hadn't mastered being eighteen the way the rest of her friends had.

Many of them had started to drop broad comments about her hitching up with someone, too – tasting the fruit of life, wink wink, nudge nudge.

_She'd_ started to learn how to fake through where the innocence had once been, still, it all seemed…trivial. She didn't think she'd outgrown her friends – that would be utterly egotistical, and mean, and wrong.

But maybe they'd outgrown her, during all those frozen instants.

Besides, most of that winking had been directed surreptitiously towards Kuros- towards Ichigo, who'd rolled his eyes because, honestly, he wasn't blind, and offered her the kind of sympathetic smile she would have hoarded once, but not anymore. She'd mirrored it instead, and he'd turned back to Rukia.

And all she could think about it was – _no, not anymore_, and drop her eyes. Inoue knew that she had to _get it together, girl,_for herself and all her nameka, and because, frankly, Grimmjow's ghost – did he have one, if he'd been a ghost already? – would be incensed and possibly also amused to know that he'd been at the root of her moping around. She recalled wanting to prove to him that that wasn't all she was good for. She recalled that he'd been bemused by her transitions between Sunshinesunshinesunshine – angst - Sunshine.

_He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she cried, his features unusually wary. She laughed at him through the tears. _

_He didn't ask what was wrong, didn't shower her with concern. He strode off and watched TV in the next room. _

_She felt inexplicably comforted anyway. _

She would get better, she knew. She'd definitely become strong, and help Kurosaki – kun with all his plans, and live life to the full. Just – just a bit later.

Her feet turned automatically, leading her back to where their apartment had been, and she had to jerk herself up short, because it wasn't still hers at all. Ichigo had persuaded her to move out not long after Grimmjow's vanishing. She shared a flat with Tatsuki and the other girls; the company helped her to not brood.

She still felt like she was living in a dream. It had been a shock to find out that she couldn't fly independently after all.

_This is it, she told him, waving at the climbing frame that stood not far from where she was _now_. This is the shape of an aeroplane. _

_What, that thing? He asked, examining it critically. How does the damn thing get off the ground with all the holes?_

"Inoue! Hey, Inoue!"

Chiziru rugby tackled her friend, slightly startled when Inoue swayed but didn't stumble. She dismissed it, beaming and hugging affectionately at the taller girl's curves, at least until Tatsuki caught up, fully prepared to swat her away. Inoue untangled herself quickly and gently before her best friend reduced her good one to a bloody pulp.

"Are you still coming, Inoue? Tomorrow night, will I finally see my Inoue's sweet smile again?"

"I hope so." Inoue's lips twitched.

"You _have _seemed down lately." Tatsuki looked seriously across at her. In truth, she'd been trying to bridge the sudden and unexplained chasm for months, watching while Inoue fell further and further into herself.

"I'm sorry." She nodded at them both. "I'm sure I'll really enjoy the party, Chiziru."

And Tatsuki had to be satisfied with that.

_Are _all_ your friends this weird? He asked, in all seriousness. After some thought, she had to admit – yes. He smirked. _

_I think I met a normal person back in middle school, she added. He didn't believe her. She attracted axe-crazies, apparently, which was just as well. _

Chiziru turned abruptly serious as the pair stood on the sidewalk, looking after Orihime's ordered retreat.

"She'd been really down, hasn't she? Do you know why?"

"No." Tatsuki's fists clenched. "I don't know." Her eyes were distant and sad, negating the anger in her posture. "She…won't tell me."

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It was warm, truly warm, and he used that as an excuse not to open his eyes for quite a long time.

When he did, the sunlight slipped between the lids, sharper that the syrupy light of her shields, but somehow with the same qualities. It wiped the shadows away from the inside of his brain.

He blinked, features going from lax to scrunched up, but he wasn't discomforted.

"Think he's dead?"

"Everyone's dead here, idiot."

"His eyes are open!"

"Think he has any money?"

_It looks weak, they'd said, when he first entered Hueco Mundo._

_Think it would taste good? _

Grimmjow sat up, now annoyed. He gave the small assembly of children his best polished glare, and they scattered instantly, leaving only a slight signature in the dust to remember their existence.

_Now…where the hell am I?_

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Back here again, like a record on repeat.

It was tomorrow already, Inoue was back at the park as if by appointment.

Admittedly, she was sitting on the swing this time, and the wind had gone still, and everything now had the pretty overtone of blue that some evenings brought, but she felt like she was going in circles nonetheless.

She kicked the ground to slow herself down, dragging her feet back and forth until she'd scraped a straight line in the dirt.

She was too tired to think about it, really, direction or difficulty or defeat. She was so _tired. _If she'd ever blamed him, she'd let it go now, knowing what it was like to just feel…empty. You'd take anything to fill up.

_He slumped on his sleeping space, and poked the pancakes._

_These again?_

_She nodded happily. I added some extra stuff, though. Like chocolate. _

…_I must be desperate, he muttered, taking a bite._

_She'd thought he _liked _chocolate._

Being so bone weary, she decided to go for a walk.

She felt somewhat more cheerful once she got moving - so this was a catharsis, a venting. Maybe after she'd thrown herself headfirst into the party – but not so much as to try that illegal alcohol – everything would settle. She'd be able to get on with living in a way which wouldn't have irritated the one she was mourning for into whapping her over the head.

Probably a bad sign that that mental image didn't make her giggle, but, well…even now, because of the way it had been, she was pretty sure everything was going to be alright.

And so she let her feet take her back to where she wanted most to be, this once, and pause.

The apartment looked essentially the same, somewhat run down but cheerful and overgrown. Someone was moving in the top floor window, playing with shadows against the glass. She let it soak in.

For a place that an optimistic estate agent wouldn't give a second glance, it was very cheering. Inoue waited there for an indeterminate length of time, feet slowly taking root, until she had an anchor.

If those inside noticed the strange girl on the pavement scoping out their house, they never mustered up the energy to do anything about it. So that was alright too.

Still, she had the feeling that there was something else she needed to do, something onimous…

"Oh, no!" The something clicked, deep in the timekeeping part of Inoue's brain, and she gave her watch an alarmed look. 8:40 – only ten minutes past the start of the party. She let out a short breath of relief and turned to go.

Another shadow moved, much closer. She caught a flash of white in her peripheral vision, and heard the rustle of clothing and the short sharp breathing, and hurried herself up. The figure behind her was way too close, and she didn't want to have to beat off madmen at this time of nig-

"Where the hell are you going?"

Terse, irritated, familiar as the town she'd always lived in, but it couldn't possibly be real.

She stopped, quite still, and a hand grasped her shoulder.

"Hey."

Yes. Yes, that _was_ his voice. So this was one of those dreams.

"I've been lookin' for ya."

Fingers tightened, breath quickened, she drove her heel into the toes of the other foot, and failed to fall awake.

Grimmjow caught that, and pinched her side helpfully. Inoue squeaked.

He gave her a few seconds of breathlessness before hooking a finger under her chin and tilting it up.

"So?" he asked impatiently.

If he'd been any mortal man his lungs would probably been pulverised when she attacked, in that touchy-feely way she had, but he _had _sort of asked for it. She hugged him fiercely, face pressed tearless into his chest as he patted her indulgently on the head.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. If you're finished?"

Inoue looked up at that, expectant, but Grimmjow's eyes avoided hers, flickering up to the apartment instead.

"Nothing to say?"

"I'm glad," she told him, smiling, and felt him shrug slightly. "How…why?"

Another shrug. He untangled her gently.

"Seems like there was more to me than we thought," he said. "Woke up in Soul Society – like this."

She stared at him, examining.

"Oh," she said. "Your mask." She ran an exploratory hand over his abdomen, blushing in reply to the grin that appeared on his maskless face. "No hole. And-"

His grin drained to embarrassment.

"Your hair!" She reached up to tug a lock of it, frowning as he jerked away. "It's not blue!"

He shifted self consciously, awkward. "No, it isn't. Do you think we could change the subject?"

She was not so easily deterred, still reaching. "It's blond!"

"I know."

"It's pretty."

"Shut up."

She giggled. The feeling was unfamiliar, but inside her chest her heart was loosening, the dullness that had kept it still and steady thawing. Some of the excess moisture shone in her eyes, but she didn't cry. She hugged him again instead, and it said something for the magic of the moment that he didn't immediately push her away.

"Thank you. Thank you .Thank you." He felt warm against her cheek, another newness to absorb, along with the joy.

"My pleasure, Princess."

She reached down, taking his hand in hers, and then wrapping his fingers carefully around her wrist.

"So," he said again, aimless, not objecting. "I guess we have a lot to talk about."

"I guess we do," she agreed, giving him a sideways look. "Grimmjow Jaggerjack."

His face, newly unadorned, split into its old grin. "That's _Captain _Grimmjow Jaggerjack to you, Woman," he informed her, and pulled from behind his back a battered old hat, cramming it roughly on her head. "Post Captain of the British Navy, but I'm not telling you how old I am."

"Oh! Is it really old?"

"Did you hear what I just said, woman?"

"Fifty years!"

"You think _fifty_ is old?"

"Two hundred!"

"Warmer…"

"A thousand!"

"A thou – do I look a thousand to you?"

By silent but mutual consensus they had turned up the road, he striding, she jogging to keep up.

"Well, maybe not quite a thousand…nine hundred?"

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"Are you ready yet?" Ichigo banged on Rukia's door, all impatience. "The party will be finished before we get there at this rate."

"Don't be silly," she replied coolly, swinging it open and propelling him down the corridor. "No one goes to parties exactly on time."

They stepped out, ignoring Isshin rhapsodising over Ichigo growing up so quickly, going out to big parties – It's only Mizuiru's, idiot! – already, and him only sixteen – eighteen, you ass – with his girlfriend.

"She's not my girlfriend, you - "

Rukia, wisely interpreting this happy start as a half hour delay, grabbed him by the collar and dragged him away, waving cheerfully at the rest of his family, who had assembled to be amused.

"Jeez," he grumbled, straightening his shirt.

"I hope Orihime comes," Rukia said softly. "She's been so quiet."

He sobered, nodding. "I know. I hope she's there too. Tatsuki's been asking me about her, you know, but I don't think she wants to talk about it. Bloody Grimmjow," he added, without rancour. Rukia smiled sadly.

A depressed hush fell. It was a fairly unnatural state for Kakakura town to be in, quiet and still at nine a clock at night. There were a large number of teenagers living there.

"Seven hundred and ninety nine?"

Inoue's voice broke it, sounding far more cheerful than either of her friends had heard her in months.

"Guess again, wise-ass."

Ichigo and Rukia exchanged looks of amazement, recognising the rougher tones and exactly who they belonged to.

The second couple turned the corner, coming face to astonished face with the party goers. Grimmjow almost cracked up laughing.

"You," said Ichigo blankly.

"Me," deadpanned his old enemy, raising a brow. "Where are you lot going, all dressed up?"

"There _was _a party," Inoue faltered. "But…um."

Silence pooled again, the shinigami hopeful for an explanation while Inoue worried over the trivial for the first time in months.

Rukia's eyes narrowed, flickering over Grimmjow's face and on to Orihime, who was fidgeting awkwardly.

"We'll make your apologies," she said abruptly, shattering the reverie and yanking Ichigo along for the third time that night. "Don't worry about it.

"Inoue told us how you vanished," she informed Grimmjow. "And it looks like your soul has been purified without a Zanpaku-to. Talk to Urahara, he'll be so interested that he'll probably help you for free, or at least lend you a gigai if you want one. You two have fun, now. Come on, Ichigo!"

For that worthy was resisting. As Rukia had done, he looked from Orihime to Grimmjow and back again, and then finally nodded.

"Take care of her, Okay?" he said, and turned on his heel, striding off in front of Rukia.

"Pft. Whatever, Kurosaki. Was that supposed to be permission?" Grimmjow wrinkled his nose. Orihime beamed, and then blinked. "Permission for what?"

"I'll tell you about it sometime," Grimmjow said, turning away from the disappearing substitute and his not-a-girlfriend with an air of finality. "Where are you staying now?"

She started telling him, interjecting incongruous guesses at his age amongst the discussions over living arrangements.

Even half way up the opposite road, Ichigo could hear her laughter, and smiled.

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"What? Are you telling me I _don't _get to see my lovely Orihime's smile after all?" said Chizuri in indignation.

"I don't know," Rukia said, sticking to reservation as a safe bet. "Maybe she'll drop by sometime later. But I think she'll be smiling a bit more often now anyway."

"Really?" All Orihime's girlfriends looked somewhere between relieved and doubtful. Keigo sighed loudly.

"Bet she's gone and gotten a boyfriend," he said gloomily.

Rukia couldn't resist.

"Something like that, maybe," she said, straight-faced. Chizuru looked furious.

"Who? Who has stolen my beloved Orihime?"

"Maybe we should warn Grimmjow," murmured Ichigo. He raised his voice. "A big guy, tall – kinda old, though, I think."

"Old? My Orihime wasting herself on a pensioner! I won't stand for this! I'll find him, and…and…"

Ichigo enjoyed himself listening to all the possible tortures Chizuru could come up with, some of them pretty imaginative. Evening entertainment had never been so good.

He noticed Tatsuki giving him a quizzical, interested look.

"She's fine," he said softly, and hoped it was true.

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"Six hundred and eighty?"

"No, Orihime."

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_And long may be the reign of snow. _

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AN: And Done!

Alas, it is a somewhat conventional ending, but still...Whee! I had this written for the last six chapters, so it's great to finally post it. I missed out a lot of the backstory for Grimmjow that I had thought up, because it wasn't really necessary, but I'm kinda sad about that. He _is_like three thirds French in this story, but lost parents early on, ran away to sea, yatta yatta, ended up in the British Navy. Even he isn't quite sure how that happened. I'm not specifying what time he lived in, but it was somewhere between two hundred and six hundred and eighty years ago. Lol.

Am I forgiven? It's not like death in Bleach is more than a slight inconvenience anyway. I hope it makes reasonable sense what happened to Grimmjow, basically he said it last chapter - the thing stopping him remembering his human memories was the fact that he wasn't human. So Orihime very gradually turned him into one. He slowed her down quite considerably by resisting this throughout the story, but as he came to accept things outside an ordinary hollow's sphere of existance it got easier, until last chapter his completed soul went off to soul society - giving my lovely readers heart failure - and this chapter he booted it back. Yay.

I'm so sad to see this go! It's like my baby. And I love you all. And I will be writing more Grimmhime in the future. And probably some other things that I am forgetting to mention, but basically thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the ride.


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